Guardian
by KyoudaiDoushi
Summary: He defeated Voldemort and they turned on him, so he left. Moved to the US, completed High School then College with three different degrees. Then he was contacted by a branch of the government that technically didn't exist with the Mother-of-all job offers; Sector Seven with genuine alien artifacts. Now his fate was intricately tied with that of a mechanical alien race.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

Paradise, Nevada, 4:00 AM

In the bedroom of a medium-sized apartment, an annoyingly loud and insistent ringing broke the dark silence of the pre-dawn hours. It took less than two seconds for the sound to change to something that sounded suspiciously like an alarmed squawk before the offending object met the far wall with a resounding crash.

With a reluctant groan, a mane of dark hair emerged from somewhere beneath the covers and stumbled towards the bathroom, seemingly taking no notice when his alarm clock started reassembling itself before flying back to the bedside table were it had originally resided. This may have had something to do with the fact that such a sight was a daily occurrence. Or perhaps the fact that the owner of said object had seen far more impossible things in the world to be astonished by such a little thing as a self-repairing clock. Especially since he himself had enchanted it to do just that when his best friend, Hermione, had demonstrated how it worked when she'd given it to him as a going away present. He'd known even before using it that something that seemed specifically designed to scare him awake wasn't going to survive long.

Mad-Eye's training during the war insured that.

Twenty minutes after his rude awakening, the young magic-user glided out of the bathroom towards the kitchen, toweling the excess water out of his mane despite knowing he'd need to use a drying charm to ever get it fully dry, even in the arid environ of Nevada, drastically different than the constantly wet Europe he'd grown up in. As he passed through, navigating by memory alone, face entirely covered with towel and wet hair, the TV turned itself onto the news, the newspaper flew through the mail slot to the table, and two pots of water filled themselves and settled onto the stove to begin heating, one for his tea, the other for his breakfast. All of this happened seemingly without his notice as he sat in the only chair at the island in the middle of the kitchen, vigorously scrubbing at his mane until it reached 'merely damp' status instead of 'dripping wet'. It was only when a steaming cup of tea settled itself in front of him did he even bother to open his eyes, his towel flying itself to the dirty clothes hamper.

Alls in the morning of one Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived-To-Be-The-Man-Who-Abandoned-Us...

And, yes. That _was_ actually what a good chunk of the British Wizarding World was calling him. Hence, the reason he lived in Nevada instead of Europe, though France was nice the last time he'd visited Bill and Fleur. If Voldemort hadn't been such an insane bastard bent on World Domination –note the capitalization– he'd have probably let him have Britain without opposition. As it was, the snake-faced bastard had been bent on killing him for reasons the former Boy-Who-Lived had had to quite literally _drag_ out of Dumbledore, via blackmail. Harry sure as Hell wasn't going to take that sitting, much less _lying_ down like Dumbledore had intended.

The dark-haired youth had gone into a rage like no other when he'd learned that the old goat-fucker's _only_ plan for defeating Voldemort, over the course of _twenty years_, was for Harry to die so the old man could take a potshot at the evil bastard while the snake was gloating over his body. Dumbledore had never intended to tell Harry he was a living Horcrux. Hell, he'd never intended to tell him _at all_ about the Horcruxes. Harry had had to learn about them from Mad-Eye Moody of all people.

Draining his current cup of tea, Harry tied his damp mane back from his face and set about making breakfast manually. He could do so with magic, and did most mornings –it was a great control exercise– but sometimes one just wanted to do things the old fashion way. Twenty minutes later he finished making and eating his light meal, magically setting the dishes to do themselves while he finished getting ready for the day.

His first task, even before dressing, was tackling the daily labor of taming his mane. Scowling lightly into the full length mirror on his bedroom wall, Harry ran his fingers repeatedly through the black mass falling around his shoulders and down his back, hand charged with magic to help get rid of any knots that had made their way in when he was drying it. There was a _reason_ he called it, even mentally, a mane.

It was.

Three times the thickness it had ever been with a consistency more like fur than hair, the dark mass fell down to his hips when unbound, the locks puffed out like a static charge was running though his body. One of his collage buddies, the first time they'd see his hair unbound, made a reference to a Japanese comic book series he'd read called Yu Yu Hakusho. The character Yusuke in Mazoku form had much the same problem he dealt with on a daily basis, only the Demon's hair was a Hell of a lot longer. When his friend had told him that, he had only smirked, wondering at the time what they would think if he'd told them how long it was directly after the first time he'd transformed into his Animagus form. Not that any of them could have said anything anyway; he placed security spells on them the first opportunity he got. His _true_ form, that behind the relative mask of 'Harry', was not something he just waved around for all to see. It was his getaway when he grew tired of the Mask.

Satisfied he'd gotten it as neat as it was ever going to be, Harry swiftly tied the mane back into a tight braid with practiced ease, coiling it on the back of his head before securing it with a metal plate engraved with a mild Notice-Me-Not and his personal sigil, not that anyone could see it due to the former. Dressing quickly in his best pair of slacks and a black dress shirt, tucking the Cypher beneath his shirt, he grabbed what he needed for the day and secured his apartment, heading for the complexes garage to claim his car, a color changing '81 Slug Bug.

He'd gotten more than a little teasing over it from his school friends, in both High School and collage. 'Cute', was what they called it, even after he'd had it changed from the pale pink he'd bought it in to Mystic, an entirely Mundane paint that changed colors depending on how the light hit it. But it was his first and favorite car and he wouldn't trade it for anything. Especially after all the work he'd put into it, both on the mechanical side of things and the –_ahem–_ not exactly legal magical side. It had so many wards, spells and other enchantments on it, his cute little Beetle Bug could probably play chicken with a tank _and win_. He was honestly surprised it hadn't gotten up and started moving around on it's own like Mr. Weasley's Ford Angelina, which even to this day still stalked around the Forbidden Forest, was wont to do.

Settling into traffic, Harry sighed and triple checked his already memorized map, just to make certain he was heading in the right direction. It wouldn't do for him to be late for his first day of work, especially since his 'boss' was technically the US government.

That's right. Him, a Brit, was working for the government of the United States of America... _technically_. From what the contract he'd signed two weeks before stated, he was really joining a research branch of the government that was 'off the books' and so top secret he could probably be thrown in some deep dark hole for farting at an inopportune moment. But the opportunity, from what little the representative whom had contacted him was able to tell him, was far too good to pass up. He was going to have the chance to be on the cutting edge of technological advancement.

Yeah, it was a strange thought. Something almost no one he knew in Britain would have expected from him. He, Harry Potter, ridiculously powerful and highly trained Mage, killer of Voldemort and numerous Death Eater and the holder of the infamous moniker 'the Boy-Who-Lived', was bonafied techno-geek.

A _certified_, bonafied techno-geek.

He even had degrees and everything. A Doctorate in Engineering, a Masters in Applied Sciences and an Associates in Applied Linguistics.

He'd been in the process of getting his Doctorate in Applied Sciences and Masters in Applied Linguistics when the government had contacted him with the mother of all job offers. Apparently his soaring scores and record completion times had caught their attention. They had no way of knowing, and he sure as Hell wasn't telling them, that he'd cheated. Well, cheated _time_ in any case.

Time Turners were highly useful tools.

He still planned on getting them, as well as a Doctorate in Applied Linguistics, he just now had to do it in his spare time.

Now, one might wonder how our favorite boy hero had come to this point, driving down a Nevada highway in a highly enchanted little Volkswagen, a graduate from both an American High School and Collage with honors, and heading for a job with the a branch of the US government that didn't exist on paper?

One could say it started after his Forth Year, when he and Dudley were attacked by Dementors that he later learned had been sent by that Toad from Hell, Umbridge. But to really understand his mindset, one has to go much further back.

When he'd gotten back from his First Year at Hogwarts, his Aunt had sat him down for a serious discussion, one she hadn't been capable of before due to a spell Dumbledore had placed on the letter left with him as a baby, preventing her or Vernon from speaking anything about magic or the magical world, even to him. The fact that Vernon could even say "there's no such things as magic" was a testament to his mule-like thick headed stubbornness. Of course, it _might_ have had something to do with the fact that he _really_ wanted that statement to be true. Vernon Dursley _hated_ magic. The Marauders, unfortunately, had something to do with that.

In their discussion, Petunia had explained to him that, unlike her husband, she didn't actually hate magic. She loved and respected magic and had even written to Dumbledore after Lily had gotten her letter, begging him to allow her to attend as well. And, despite being denied due to her lack of a magical Core, she still could have completed the theoretical portions on the OWL and NEWT, as well as the practical portions of quite a few of them that didn't involve a wand, with straight O's if she'd been allowed to take them. What she hated was the people, or more to point of fact, the _society_ that used it.

"The British Wizarding World," she had explained, "is so ridiculously backwards in virtually everything they do. But because it was _magic_, they think it's alright." She could see so much good that could be done with magic if only the people would pull their head out of their asses. Potions that can mend severely broken bones in a matter of hours. Spells that can heal injuries that would be otherwise debilitating. Spells that can assist in breaking dangerous obsessions, preventing self-injury and suicides. Spells and wards that could cut injury in various works places, such as construction sites, down to virtually nothing. Hell, magical construction took a fraction of the time, manpower and money as non-magical.

All the good that could be done, and yet virtually the entire society seemed bent on using their gifts to harm, twisting the abilities in such convoluted ways, their society miles outside what the rest of the world considers common decency. Potions and spells designed to tear the free will from a person, torture and kill them. Spells good for nothing but humiliating those that would later not remember it because they thought they had the right to take someone's memories, just because they couldn't use magic as well. Potions that made you think you were in love with someone, even if you hated them.

_Love Potions_.

Of all the things created due to the presence of magic, Love Potions were one thing Petunia _despised_ with a passion. They may sound romantic in story books, but she saw them as nothing more than legalized rape on the poor soul being controlled by them. She had, in fact, immediately written the school Healer, begging her to check her sister out, after Lily had written her about how she was madly in love with the same boy she had despised since she first met him on the train at the age of eleven. Luckily she had been cleared; James had just decided to make his previously recessive personality trait, otherwise known as _maturity_, into the dominate one.

It was this backwards world that took her precious little sister from her, brainwashing Lily into thinking such things were alright when they _weren't_. It was the world and the people she hated. Not magic.

Despite himself, his experiences in his first year of the Wizarding World had led him to agreeing with her on many points. The primary sticking point for him being that they were incapable of adapting and advancing with the rest of the world. He may not have had the best childhood due to Vernon's stubbornness and dislike for anything to do with magic, but at least he had been stuck in the Dark Ages. He had been fed plenty, even if his Aunt had to occasionally sneak snacks into his cupboard for him to munch on in the middle of the night, and he had gotten lots of exercise disguised as his chores since Vernon wouldn't let him go out and play with the neighborhood children. And, no matter what his numerous scars might indicate, Vernon was never abusive. The one and _only_ time he'd ever been struck, his Aunt had put her foot down and threatened to take both he and Dudley away if her husband couldn't control his temper.

In the three months between his First and Second Years at Hogwarts, Harry had attended his first year at Summer School to keep up with his normal education, all the while studying the trunk full of books that Petunia had given him on things they wouldn't learn in school that once belonged to she and his Mother. Books on the History and such of the Wizarding World from around the world. Magical districts on almost every continent. What governments controlled what territories, which may or may not have followed the non-magical territorial lines. It was rather obvious in just the first couple he'd read that Britain, unlike much of the rest of the magical and non-magical world, had advanced very little in the five hundred years previous.

When he'd come back after Second Year, he'd once again sat down with his Aunt and explained everything that had happened to him, from Dobby stealing his letters the summer before and trying to stop him from going to school, to his gift of Parseltongue, to _Lockhart_ –of whom they'd both agreed had gotten off lucky with just loosing his memory– to the Basilisk and the sword and Dumbledore's rather peculiar behavior towards the entire thing. Harry had proclaimed right then and there, no matter _what_ Dumbledore said, _especially_ what Dumbledore said, if crap like that kept happening he was quitting Hogwarts. Being the school pariah he could handle, no matter how much of a pain in the ass it was. It wasn't any different than what he'd grown up with. He _was not_ going to put up with another year of someone trying to kill him _again_.

Once was a coincidence. Twice in as many years was a conspiracy.

Petunia had then informed him that she was well aware of the fact that James Potter had been a wealthy Pureblood, all of which belonged to Harry as the last of his line. If he wanted, he could easily afford magical tutors, even if there had been little, at the time, he could do with the companies in his family's name. The name 'Hogwarts' may have opened doors, they'd mutually agreed, but it meant jack-shit if he didn't live long enough to graduate.

The summer after Third Year had been filled with a teenager that couldn't decide whether to be pissed over the year's events or intrigued over the new forms of magic he had discovered. Werewolves, Animagus, and a deceptively simple and tiny devise that could allow you to leap a short ways back though time. Friends of his Father, the Marauders. A Godfather he never knew existed. An innocent man proclaimed guilty and thrown in prison without a trial. A dead man that wasn't actually dead and guilty of it all. Both he and his Aunt agreed it was probably better that Vernon didn't know that Sirius Black wasn't actually guilty of the things he was accused of. It put an extra bit of protection between Harry and his Uncle's slowly increasing temper. The older he got, the worse it seemed to become.

A few days back from Hogwarts, Sirius had shown up at their back door, as Padfoot of course, to speak with Petunia, explain to her, _and Harry_, his reasoning's for not taking Harry with him. He was a fugitive on the run and didn't want that kind of life for Harry, even for a single Summer, especially since he had to spend most of his time in his Animagus form to avoid detection. "Plus," he had added, as almost an afterthought "Dumbledore's being ass. Old man left me to rot in prison and now he wants me to do this and that like I'm some little errand-boy? I don't think so."

It was then that Harry had begun to see a disturbing trend when it came to Dumbledore and his attitude towards the world.

Sirius had left him with the Animagus books the Marauders had written, including their original research diaries containing their observations of what worked, what didn't and what could have made the process easier if they'd know beforehand, making Harry promise to practice the first steps in the completed book, most of which included a lot of meditation and learning one's own mind and Core intimately. He'd also given him a rare three-way mirror, telling him to call either he or Remus, whom had the third connection, if he ran into difficulty. Both Sirius and Remus had come by several times that Summer to help him practice... mostly Remus since Sirius had to keep a low profile. They did speak nightly, however. Sirius may have hated virtually every member of his family, live or dead, but he was still a Pureblood to the core and had taught Harry that Summer a great deal of what was expected of him as the Scion and heir of an old Pureblood family.

He'd also learned _why_ exactly Draco had taken such offense to him refusing to shake his hand in the First Year and had set out on what had seemed for the longest time as a personal Search and Destroy Mission against him.

And then there was Forth Year...

Forth Year was just... bad.

Despite having top box tickets via the Weasley family, he'd been forced to miss the World Cup due to final tests for his Summer School. Though from what he'd heard from the Twins it was a stroke of good luck on his part that he had. He could only image what sort of trouble he'd have gotten into if he'd actually been there. It seemed to follow him.

Then the Tri-Wizard Tournament. A tournament which had previously been competed in by _adults_, which had been canceled because of how many people were _dying_ while participating. So _of course_ he'd been entered and forced to compete. He hadn't discovered until around the time of Third Task that there were about a hundred ways he could have forfeited with only minimal consequences to himself. And none of that 'it's a magical contract, you'll loose your magic if you don't compete' crap he'd been told at the time. And that was only if he'd _purposely_ entered. Since he hadn't, nor had be provided his magical signature to the supposed 'contract', he could have spent the entire day up in Griffindor Tower during the first task and merely been disqualified, with nothing worse than people accusing him of being coward for not competing.

Yeah. Like that wasn't the least bit suspicious on the part of their esteemed Headmaster. And how had the man not known that the person who taught them Defense all year was a fake? Mad-Eye was suppose to be one of Dumbledore's oldest friends! After only a year training with the man Harry could have told that the man that taught them all Fourth Year was a fake. Alastor Moody was a paranoid old warrior, for good reason given the career he'd led in his youth, but he wasn't quite _that_ paranoid. And he wouldn't be caught dead using the Unforgivables, even in a classroom setting. No, _especially_ in a classroom setting. They were called _Unforgivables_ for a _reason_. The magics that gave them power went against nature, twisting a man's magic, mind and soul until it broke.

And people wondered why most Death Eaters were insane.

Doubly so for Mr. 'I-pass-out-the-Cruciatus-like-candy' Riddle.

Of course, his Horcruxes didn't help any in that matter.

Harry hadn't been fast enough, nor anywhere near well trained enough to save his friend Cedric when they'd been kidnapped at the end of the tournament, one of the first casualties of the Second Blood War. At the time he'd barely gotten away with his own life, and that was only because the snake-faced monster that dared to call himself a Wizard had been too busy gloating. To make matters worse, Fudge had been a complete coward.

Harry, in a moment of adrenaline fueled clarity, had been able to prevent himself from blurting out in front of the entire stadium that Voldemort was back, speaking to the idiotic Minister in private. The man hadn't believed him, calling him a liar. He'd even tried to go as far as to accuse _Harry himself_ of killing Cedric so he could win the Tournament. Sirius' lessons in 'everything-it-means-to-be-a-Pureblood' had come in handy then. Watching the little bastard pale and flush at the same time when Harry tore into him like the heir of an _Ancient Pureblood family_ he was had been extremely satisfying.

When Voldemort attacked the Ministry in '96, the little bastard had lived just long enough to see Voldemort for himself before dying. Painfully. Harry hadn't know a body could twist like that without actually breaking anything... at first.

Harry was back at Privet Drive less than a month when the Dementors attacked. The _owl_ carrying the letter from the Improper Use of Magic Department stating he was expelled for using magic in front of a Muggle arrived a scant half hour later. The _Aurors_ there to take him into custody and Obliviate said Muggle didn't arrive until mid-morning _the next day_.

_Efficient_ they were not.

Over the years he'd trained with him, he'd heard a small book worth of rants from Mad-Eye just about the idiots the Ministry called Aurors at the date, never mind about the Ministry itself. That was another Encyclopedia sized book, with several chapter dedicated exclusively to Cornelius Fudge. How that man had ever made it to Minister no one knew.

With the arrival of the letter, Harry had taken the opportunity given to him to put into action the runner he, his Aunt and later the Marauders had been planning since he was twelve when he'd decided he was damn tired of nearly being killed ever year in the supposedly 'Safest Place in the World'. A quick mirror call to Sirius and Remus to inform them of what happened and that he was leaving, and he was out of Surrey before the sun set. Preplanned, he'd had everything he'd needed to survive for several months on his own packed, including a new non-Ministry tracked wand which Remus had taken him to get the summer before. He'd left his Phoenix wand, shattered, in a box on his bedside table with a simple note to Dumbledore and the Ministry in general.

'Fuck You and Have Nice Day.'

The big yellow, slightly evil looking smiley face postcard his Aunt had had him write it on had been a particularly nice touch.

Shocking, but nice.

Old Mad-Eye caught up with him about two months later just outside of France and kicked his ass. To his credit, he did break a few bones, burn a good amount of flesh and take out another chunk from the old Auror's nose beforehand. Moody had been so impressed with his ability to think fast in an ambush, not to mentioned a tad annoyed with Dumbledore's 'watch and do nothing' policy, that he'd taken him under his wing to prepare for the war.

Harry had been more than a little pissed when he learned from Mad-Eye that people had been approaching Dumbledore ever since his First Year with offers to give him training. People who had seen that, one way or another, Harry would be involved in the coming war, whether he wanted to be or not. Mad-Eye himself had tried to convince Dumbledore to give him at least basic survival training since the first moment the old snake poked his head back out of his hole. Dumbledore had refused them all.

After catching him in France and taking him as his apprentice, Moody ran him ragged, training with copious –and probably illegal– use of Time Turners in locations all over Europe and Asia, pushing the magical devises to their absolute maximum capacity backwards to get the most time training that they possibly could. Useful tools they were, especially in the hands of an old warrior that didn't believe in the term 'rules of magic'.

"Magic," Mad-Eye would always say "doesn't _have_ rules. Magic is life, and life doesn't care for our mortal constraints. It's our _minds_ that fail us, not our magic. You keep that in mind and with a strong enough will, you can do anything."

One shocking thing they discovered, with their probably record use of the magical devises, was that, due to the powdered Faerie Wings and other highly magical ingredients that made the devises possible, those that used them –while they did age in normal time– actually had age _reversed_ every time they used the Time Turner. So, while he was technically _mentally_ and _magically_ years older by the time it was all said and done with, he wasn't physically any older that he was suppose to be.

With it, and probably every Time Turner on the Eurasian continent, Harry got a good fifteen _years_ of proper training, including joining the RAF for a combined decade under an assumed name, with Moody calling in the mother-of-all favors with several different squib-born Marshals so he could have experience in Mundane warfare. If he ever chose to rejoin the military officially, he technically held the rank of Wing Commander. It was even approved by the Queen. _That_ had been an interesting meeting.

No one but the two of them knew of the Time Turners. Anyone Harry trained with required a magical oath before Moody would let them do anything. The few Outsiders that did find out about them were promptly hunted down by the duo and Obliviated.

Harry swore his Aunt would never find out just how proficient he was with that spell. It was one of them that made her hate the magical world.

During their fifteen years together, Harry and Mad-Eye also took the opportunity to hunt down the Horcruxes and be rid of them before Voldemort could secure them in better locations. Mad-Eye had been telling Dumbledore for years that he should have done just that during the watching peace, the decade where Voldemort was nothing but a more or less harmless ghost. The old man had said they were fine where they were.

They were in obvious disagreement.

It's also during this time that Harry finally figured out how to transform into his Animagus form, a magical creature known to the Mundane world as an Epicyon Haydeni, though they were thought to be extinct by both worlds. It was, according to a book in the Library of Alexandria that Harry managed to find, an ancient predecessor and magical cousin of the Maned Wolf, standing 4' at the shoulder, 8' long and weighing nearly 600 lbs. His coloring, surprisingly, was nearly identical to that of a Maned Wolf as well, with shadow-like fire swirling around his paws and mane. If it wasn't for his size and the obvious magical qualities, he could quite easily pass for one of them.

Mad-Eye had laughed himself silly when, the morning after his first transformation, he'd woken up with his perpetually messy hair longer than he was tall and fluffier than Padfoot's fur after a good scrubbing, the mane-like mass taking up more space than he did. They'd both tried cutting it, but for some reason it wouldn't stay any shorter than what he eventually decided to leave it, down to his hips. He'd learned to deal with it, quickly learning to braid. After seeing the Blade Trilogy during one of his rare weeks off from training while Moody obtained a new Time Turner, he'd taken inspiration from the battle uniform of the main female character of the second movie, Nissa, and created the metal plate clip he used to secure the braid in a coil on the back of his head, with the added benefit of having something to protect his head from blows of both the physical and magic kind.

The abilities he gained from the creature became quite useful during the war. The previously thought "Vampire only" ability of Shadow Walking became, and still was, one of this favorites. He'd scared, and killed, more than a few with it.

October 31 of 1996, Voldemort finally got fed up with sneaking around and made his big entrance by attacking the Ministry. Unfortunately, for him that is, it was also his big exit. Moody and Harry had long since thoroughly bugged virtually ever room in the Ministry and knew the exact moment the snake and his minions arrived

Through trial and error over their fifteen years of time travel, they had discovered that time could only be unchanged when undeniable proof of an event has been presented, and even then there is still a little wiggle room for interference. They knew for a fact that the Ministry had been attack, therefore they couldn't stop the attack itself. However, that didn't stop them from going back and warning their contacts within the Ministry of it so they could be prepared, claiming to have spies within the Death Eaters' ranks. With this knowledge, the unprotected lambs Voldemort and the Death Eaters had been expecting turned out to be a pack angry wolves and hungry lions.

Harry himself took great pride in leading Voldemort down into the Department of Mysteries himself and practically _giving him_ the Prophecy Orb pertaining to the both of them. Harry had heard it years before, brought down to the Hall of Prophecy by Mad-Eye. He held no fear of the snake hearing it as well and couldn't understand why Dumbledore did. It wasn't as if everyone couldn't guess what it said. It was damn obvious. All hearing it did was piss the old snake off, allowing Harry to lead him on a merry chase around the Department until they reached the infamous Death Room, an ancient execution chamber that had long since been decommissioned... supposedly.

It was around that time that the Order of the Fried Turkey's decided to make an appearance, lead by the Head Turkey himself in blazing powder blue robes–

Really, and Dumbledore wondered why no one outside of Britain in the past three or four decades took him seriously?

It was there that Harry, much to his annoyance, found himself fighting on two fronts, Voldemort with spells and _Dumbledore_ with words. The old man had been more than a little ticked that his little pawn had gone out and gotten training and wasn't willing to just step forward and die like it was told. The room actually came to a brief standstill, like one of those silly comic book scenes, when –for the first and last time in their history– he and Voldemort actually agreed on something, simultaneously telling the old man to shut the Hell up and butt out. Of course, what probably shocked them the most was the fact that it was _Harry_, not Voldemort, that actually fired a spell at the old man. Granted it was only a disarming spell, but that was besides the point. He should have been grateful that Harry only threw him against a wall while taking his wand, even going as far as to shield him from further harm while he was unconscious, instead of using something far more damaging... like blowing a limb off.

It was one of his favorite and signature disarmament techniques. Moody had lost more wooden legs that way–

He had no way of knowing at the time that everything he was changed the moment Dumbledore's former wand touched his hand. That he was the first person in over _a thousand_ years to own and master all three of the famed Deathly Hallows at the same time. Only the third of his kind in all of history.

A Master of Death.

He had felt something in him change, but he had been far too busy at the time fighting off Voldemort, who had used what little bit of logic he still possessed to try and strike him while is supposedly wasn't paying attention. Unfortunately for the snake, Harry hadn't been a decade out of practice like he had been. In his prime, before his first fall, Voldemort probably could have still kicked his ass. But in their final dual, Voldemort had been relying almost entirely on raw power; they were even in _that_ measure. Unlike the he, Harry's skills were razor sharp with fifteen years of constant training, and hadn't been relying on just his raw magic and sheer dumb luck to pull him through as it had in their past confrontations.

And that's when _everything_ changed.

He had had Voldemort against the ropes, steadily wearing down the shield he'd thrown up in desperation, when he'd heard Remus scream Sirius' name. It was his greatest weakness, he was willing to admit, his caring nature for his friends and family. The desperation in the Werewolf's tone made him turn to discover what was causing the man's distress, his training induced barrier catching the three spells Voldemort had thrown the moment he'd taken his attention off him.

And then he'd been moving, even before he'd fully registered why. His feet practically flew him through the nearest shadow, into the center of the room where Bellatrix LeStrange was cackling madly and his Godfather was falling. Falling backwards in almost slow motion, an astonished expression on his face while his hands grasped the open air, trying desperately to find purchase on something... _anything_. Falling towards the waiting veil of the infamous Arch of Death.

He'd gone in just as Harry had grasped his wrist, unable to pull him back. It had felt as if something was _pulling_ him in. Despite his training, everything that he'd ever heard about the Veil, every piece of logic that screamed at him to let go, Harry hadn't hesitated in following him in.

It had been strange, the sensation of the Veil passing over him. It hadn't been the freezing fingers of death that others had often described from just being near the Arch. It had been like a warm blanket, a friend welcoming him home after years of being gone. That didn't stop him, however, from feeling the chill that seeped into Sirius' limbs, the cold he couldn't feel trying to steal the life that had been offered to it. To the day he still wasn't sure what instinct made him transform into his Animagus form and curl protectively around his Godfather, power that was both dark and light, white and black and every shade in between exploding from within him, forming a shadowy fire-like barrier while he snarled possessively into the cold darkness, a single word riding on his mind and magic.

_**ᴪ**__**MINE**__**ᴪ**_

He still remembered every moment the spend inside the other realm. It was a place he knew he would one day return to, as was his right to what he was. The Others that were there were his.

His to protect.

His to command.

His, just as the Grim and Shadow Phoenix were.

Just as his Godfather was.

-oOoOoOo-

_**ᴪ**__**MINE**__**ᴪ**_

The darkness writhing around them with that proclamation, tendrils of what could only be called pure energy reaching out to brush passed the aura he was projecting, something he rarely did as, for reasons he'd never bothered explaining, it scared the shit out of Moody. Images and thoughts raced though his mind, information that he didn't know before. Memories that weren't his, yet were. Lifetimes condensed into moments.

Knowledge of what he was.

Realization of what he had done, what _exactly_ he possessed.

His invisibility cloak, passed down through the Potter line for centuries.

The Cloak of Invisibility.

The Gaunt Ring, turned into a Horcrux by Voldemort and stripped of the tainted soul piece by Harry.

The Stone of Resurrection.

Dumbledore's wand, passed from master to master through cunning trickery, betrayals, and defeats. Grindlewald, Dumbledore, Potter.

The Elder Wand. The Cypher, ever changing, that bound the three items to their Master.

The Deathly Hallows.

The keys of Death and he who could Master it.

The Master of Death wasn't just a title. It was a merging. He was no longer simply Harry Potter.

He was the Pharaoh, gifted the Hallows, one by one, by the Gods. The Cloak to hide him as a child from his Father's enemies, passed to him by the Priest who was his primary tutor and closest adviser. The Stone, disguised as a jewel in his headdress, to seek the guidance of his Mother in the Afterlife when he unexpected found himself as Pharaoh at a bare eight years of age, when his Father and elder Brother were both killed in battle. The Cypher, then appearing as a masterfully crafted sword, to smite his enemies and defend his people. He gave them to his grandson at the end of his life, in hopes they would serve him as they had himself. The Hallows stayed, but they did not serve the boy quite as they had their Master.

He was the peasant, born to a poor farmer's wife. He... no, _she_ found she had a gift at a young age, one she kept secret out of fear of being taken to the temple to have the Demon driven from her, as her gift was unlike the holy powers of the Monks and Miko. She had magic. She found the Cloak while gathering kindling in the woods. It hid her from the eyes of those that would kill her for her gift. She found the Stone while playing in the river with her friends; she kept it encased in a necklace made of twine. Those who had passed would come to her and teach her their ways of magic. She stole the Cypher from the monster disguised as a soldier of the land's Lord, who killed her parents in their sleep. She killed him with his own weapon, taking it for her own when she fled her village. Her her hands, the Cypher became a staff, a reflection of her dedication to knowledge and non-violence as she took up the mantle of a scholarly Priestess. She lived a long, _long_ life, full of learning and adventure. When she grew weary, she gifted her Treasures to three brothers of magic, the Cypher changing, as it had in her own hands, to a fraction of it's original size.

He was the child, touched and awakened by death at the age of one. He had a gift, one his Uncle hated and his Aunt couldn't speak of. He had power, beyond the magic of his peers. He was given the Cloak, who's protections which hid his ancestor from death never really left their blood. He stole the Stone, cleansing it of the evil which had tainted it, the twisted soul that fed off it's power to keep itself alive. He mastered the Cypher, then still in the form of the wand the eldest Perevell brother changed it to when receiving it from the Second Master, defeating it's unworthy holder who had betrayed his lover to obtain it, but never mastered it, no matter what he may have thought. It changed to a pendent of silver shaped in the sigil of the Masters, with the Stone resting in the center.

He was the Third Master of Death, he who held the keys to the Cycle of Life and Death and Beyond. And now that he had fully awoken, none could take them from him. The Key's physical vessels may be taken, or destroyed, but the power within them was within him until he gave himself to that which was his to command, where they would reform to wait for the next. The power of the ages and knowledge of those who came before him was his to command.

But with it came responsibility. The Master's were balance points and balance keepers, created to sooth the magics of the world that had become twisted and unnatural, threatening the life of the land. The Keys awoke their power, but they were created with the potential. When they were needed, the Keys would always find their way to them, no matter who tried to stop it.

The First Master, the Pharaoh's child, was created as a balance point to stop an evil that swept across his Father's lands, his lands, twisting the desert-born magic unnaturally, killing both mortal and immortal whom lived and thrived in the sands. The Evil meant for the desert to spread across the entire world, killing all those in its path. He awoke in time to halt the advance of the Evil, driving it back and locking it away with the help of his Head Priest, whom had been gifted knowledge of the ages by the Gods.

The Second Master, the farmer's child, was born when the first of the twisted pieces of unnatural magical that would later be known world wide as the Unforgivables was created. She awoke fully when the third of them came into existence, the souls of those killed by it crying out for salvation against the monsters that had tried to destroy them entirely. The Killing Curse hadn't just been created to sever the bonds between body and soul; they who created it intended for it to destroy ones _very soul_. She passed the creators of the three Unforgivables into the hands of death before moving on to teach others why the creation of such evil should be resisted.

And he, the Third Master.

Awoken, however briefly, when he was struck by the Killing Curse at the age of one. And again, fully, within the Chamber of Death. He could only assume he was awoken in response to Voldemort. The one once known as Tom Riddle, who had planned to take over the Wizarding World and reshape it in his image, had long since been consumed by the Evil known as Voldemort, whose only intention was the utter destruction of anything he didn't consider _pure_. By the time he regained a body, that was virtually _everyone_.

Growling softly at the writhing Others surrounding them, the Third lightly nipped the shoulder of the mortal in his embrace, eyes glowing as he pushed his power into wound, his mark appearing like a tattoo over his shoulder before he was forced into his own animagus form. That of the Grim. He who stood by Death as companion and guard, opposite to the Shadow Phoenix, they who guided souls to Death in the borderlands.

As soon as the transformation completed, glowing blue-grey eyes opened, Padfoot remaining startlingly calm under the Third's power despite the Others around them. He was now they, an Other, all under their Master's command.

-oOoOoOo-

Not even moments had passed before Grim and Wolf burst from the back of the Veil, hidden by his shadows while the fighting continued on around them. He had commanded his Godfather, quite tersely, not to do anything stupid again while he dealt with Voldemort, or he'd _leave him_ in the damn Veil until they were done. The scrawny Grim had whined, but obeyed –both of them a little confused over their newly changed relationship of Godson and Godfather to Master and Servant... or perhaps _pet_ had been the better describer– and circled around to deal with his insane cousin _permanently_, as he should have done in the first place as the Head of her family.

Harry had wasted no time slipping through the shadows to appear behind the annoying Dark Lord whom had all but completely stopped fighting to survey the scene in the Chamber below, no doubt looking for him. The expression he gained when Sirius had reappeared, _after going through the Veil_, had been priceless. Almost as funny as when Harry had used his magic to toss him into a wall like he was attached to a bungee and killed him with a galleon-sized ball of magically charged C4 flicked into high mouth. He was sure C4 wasn't pleasant tasting. Of course, the sensation of his head blowing up couldn't have been pleasant either.

And thus ended the reign of Voldemort, killed by the power he knew not: Muggle Explosives.

Dumbledore had, of course, been... _unhappy_, to say the least. He'd immediately tried to accost him, ranting about how he'd gotten rid of Voldemort's body, so now they couldn't kill him. Alastor had been more than happy to shut him up, bowling him over with a sack containing all the de-souled Horcruxes, minus the Resurrection Stone, which they'd faked, ranting about how if he'd done his bloody job _decades_ before, they would have never _had_ a Second Blood War, however brief it turned out to be.

Harry had decided discretion was the better part of valor and abandoned ship while Moody was keeping his old _friend_ occupied, dragging his new pet Godfather along with him. He had made brief stop by Hogwarts –to raid Dumbledore's privet effects, _with Hogwarts helping him_, steal all of Dumbledore's very old and expensive books and the sword of Gryffindor, and shatter what few of the little bobbles that were tracking him that still worked, all the while participating in a _very_ interesting conversation with Fawkes about his master of life–, before returning to the Dursley's to inform his Aunt of Voldemort's death and his extraction from the Wizarding World. Vernon had, to both their shock, done the first decent thing in his life for him: sending him to live his cousin in America... with a bit of help from Harry's most trusted teacher beside Mad-Eye... that had been a surprisingly awkward meeting.

Vernon's Cousin, after hearing 'the edited version' of what Harry had had to deal with the past several years had promptly helped to get him back into the regular school system. And the rest, as it was said, was history.

-oOoOoOo-

Sighing as he was directed though _yet another_ checkpoint in the bunker he'd been ordered to report to by his contact when he'd accepted the job –which he still didn't know exactly what was, even with his snooping– Harry drove into the garage and pulled into one of the few unmarked parking spots. He had to resist the automatic reaction of activating the cars extensive security system, settling for simply locking it and activating the most minor of enchantment he had on the thing, which encouraged a would-be thief to steal _someone elses_ car and not see his as being worth the parts it was made of. A little immoral maybe, but considering on the highest security settings it could kill virtually anything withing twenty feet of his location in at least six different ways, he thought he was being reasonable.

"Mr. Potter-Black?"

Pulling the key from the lock with a tiny burst of magic, Harry silently slipped them into his pocket and turned to his contact, not at all surprised to see him standing less than three feet behind him. Even if he hadn't heard him walking across the garage, he'd felt him coming up from what was obviously a base of some sort a good sixty feet below them, containing at least fifty personnel, with another dozen in a tunnel of some kind leading off in the same general direction as the Hoover Dam.

"Good morning, Mr. Carlson." Harry greeted smoothly.

"Ah, good. It is you. For some reason you looked different from the back." Carlson stated, glancing around as he dabbed some sweat from his brow.

Raising a brow, Harry checked his watch, confirming that it was only six in the morning. So that begged the question: What was the man so nervous about that it was causing him a physical reaction over it? "Considering the number of checkpoints and suspicious guards with itchy trigger fingers I had to go through to get here, who else would it be, Mr. Carlson?"

"Ah, right. Right you are, son." Carlson chuckled nervously, prompting Harry to unashamedly use Legilimency on him, even as his expression fell into pleasantly neutral lines, subtly urging the man to lead him to where they needed to be.

It took him no time to pull the problem from the man's completely unprotected mind. Carlson served two proverbial masters. Both wanted he, Harry, to work for the program, but one was fully planning on using Carlson as a bloody scapegoat if Harry either didn't produce the level of intellect his record promised or managed to screw up, while the other believed he'd be nothing but yet another over educated geek getting wet dreams over their tech. He didn't bother looking any further, wanting to be able to show at least _some_ genuine surprise by whatever non-earthly thingamajig the Yanks had managed to get their mitts on.

"So, if I'm not too far off my mark, I'm going to assume that I'm here in the middle of nowhere to sign a mountain of paperwork in what might as well be blood that more or less sells my soul to the US Government before you or whomever is in charge around here takes me to wherever you're really storing whatever I'm supposedly being hired to study?" Harry drawled casually, tracking what felt like a high tier soldier that had been tailing them since they entered the building, resisting the urge to smirk when Carlson stared at him in open shock. The solider was practically _radiating_ amusement.

"That's more or less accurate, kid." the soldier spoke up from directly behind them, making Carlson jump in surprise, letting out a rather embarrassing squeak of fear. "Though I'm sure they don't use blood anymore, they'll probably know everything you've had for breakfast since you were in diapers by the time they're done with you." the soldier smirked, silently surprised to see new geek was military trained. The kid was excellent at hiding it, he had to give him that, but seeing such things was what he'd been hired for. The kid's completely lack of reaction told him that he'd known he was there before he'd spoken, indicating a person who was trained to be aware of their surroundings at all times. He also saw the way those intense green eyes had flickered over his form, astonishingly picking out _all_ of his weapons before the kid had even finished turning around. The way the kid unconsciously straightened his spine upon laying eyes on his rank was also telling. The kid's file hadn't said anything about it, nor was he a military brat.

So the real question was: who trained him and why?

"What's your name, kid?"

"Harrison Potter-Black, General." Harry answered calmly, inwardly scowling as he read in the man's posture that he'd seen his training in his own. He'd thought he was good at hiding it, but damn it, one doesn't spend a decade in the military without it effecting the way they move. "But you already knew that." No way in Hell the base General wouldn't know everything about anyone coming onto his base. Looking the General over, he was mildly surprised how much he looked like that one soldier character from that fighting game one of his friends tried to get him hooked on back in High School; Guile, he thought the character's name was. He couldn't help but wonder if anyone had ever called the man on the comparison, which he was almost positive was unintentional.

Smirking, the General herded him into his office, which was were Carlson had been leading them, before shutting the door in the geek's face with his foot, effectively cutting him out of the conversation. Crossing his arms, he leaned against the wall, giving the kid another once over, thoroughly surprised that the kid either wasn't carrying any sort of weapon or he simply couldn't spot them. Either way... "So... what's your supposedly official file not state, Mr. Potter-Black? Let's start with the hyphenated name."

"You may address me as either Potter or Black if you prefer. Both are correct and official." Harry stated simply while crossing his arms behind his back, fingering the dagger hidden in his arm holster out of habit.

Ah, the joys of magic.

"Elaborate."

"I was adopted by my Godfather when I was a baby, making me his heir since he is unable to have children. I choose not to consolidate the Potter and Black lines as has happened to so many family lines in the past. However, because I am in fact the heir to both families, when I applied for US citizenship, the one authorizing it insisted on using both names." Harry explained "Therefore, here in the US, I am Harrison Potter-Black."

"I take it Potter was your original name? Or did the one signing the paperwork simply decide that calling you 'Black Potter' would sound strange and possibly offensive?" the General questioned.

"Yes, Potter is my birth name, but the latter could have had a factor in it as well." Harry smirked in amusement. He'd had a couple of friend's in High School who had hacked the system so the attendance read just that, causing more than a couple teacher give him strange looks before they figured out they'd been hacked. And the General didn't really need to know that, technically, he'd be able to find him under either the names Potter or Black quite easily even in the non-magical system; he just needed to put the titles of Sir or Baron, respectively, before them.

The General hummed thoughtfully, moving behind his desk to make a note of something Harry didn't bother reading. "I understand you're British born. Why did you come to the US?" he questioned.

Settling more comfortably on his feet, Harry was silent a few moments to organize his thoughts before answering. "Options, primarily." he started "I was raised by my Aunt and Uncle after my parents were murdered when I was a child. When I turned eleven, I received a letter stating that I was accepted to a private boarding school in Scotland, which I later learned I'd been enrolled in by my parents when I was born."

"Family thing?" the General questioned, knowing a little from some of the geeks that worked under him how some of the more exclusive boarding schools worked.

"Yes, Sir. My Mother was the first in her family, but virtually every Potter in the main branch has gone there for centuries." Harry shrugged. Sadly, the fact that there _were_ branch members of his family was something he hadn't learned until he was almost fourteen. Sirius had said something offhanded at one point during their lessons about the duties of branch members to the main family, assuming he already knew. Neither of them realized until then just how little Harry knew about _anything_ regarding his heritage. "In any case, my Aunt and I decided, shortly after my Fourth Year, that the school simply wasn't what I needed for the future I was looking at. As it was, I'd been going to Summer School in between the years since the First just to supplement with classes the school didn't offer. After Fourth Year we decided on private tutors for a couple years before my Uncle asked a favor of one of his Cousins, bringing me here to the US to formally finish my schooling." he finished, keeping his explanation to bare essentials. It was more than enough to get the General to pointedly ask for the answers he'd been fishing for.

"Not what you needed for the future you were looking at, hmm? And where does your combat training come into that equation?" the General questioned, getting to the point he _really_ wanted to know "You're good, I'll give you that. Whoever trained you knew what they were doing. But _I've_ been trained to spot such things to keep squatters out. So what were you trained for, why isn't it in your file and why should I let you ever see the light of day again?"

Sighing heavily, Harry settled more firmly on his heels, locking his arms behind his back. It went against all his training, but it was the best way to show the man that he wasn't priming for a fight. "My training is the only reason I'm currently alive to be having this conversation." he stated flatly, silently deciding on which 'official' version of events he wanted to tell the man when the General cocked a brow at him. "To understand recent events, you have to know the history of it." he started "Back in the early seventies, a man by the name of Tom Riddle formed what I suppose you could call a cult that followed ideals very similar to the ones stated by Adolf Hitler before World War II. Whereas Hitler's ideal world was based on color and religion, Riddle's was pedigree."

"Pedigree... as in, bloodlines?" the General questioned, unbelieving that anyone could start a cult over such a thing... then again, when the Hell did _any_ cult ideals make sense to those outside them?

"In the most simplistic terms, yes." Harry agreed "Riddle was a bit of a hypocrite, however. He drew so-called 'Purebloods' to his banner, mostly those with money, claiming he wished to cleans the world of the 'Mudbloods' and those whom had bred impure blood into the bloodlines, carried by those they called 'Muggles'."

"Muggle. Sounds more like an insult than anything else." the General mused. "Suppose that's the point."

"Probably." Harry shrugged "The problem with Riddle's banner was the fact that, by his own definition, Riddle himself was, in fact, a Mudblood. His Mother was one of the so-called 'Purebloods', while his Father was a Muggle. From what little I've been able to learn about it, Riddle killed virtually everyone who knew his parentage before he ever began his campaign."

"So no one could rightfully claim otherwise." the General stated, understanding such a move. Getting rid of anyone or anything that could contradict what you were currently saying was an almost cliche maneuver for leaders of such radical beliefs. For some, it was an attempt to reinvent themselves; for others, it was because they were con-artists that probably killed most of their last cult after getting the money or whatever they were trying to take from the poor fools. "Am I too far off my mark in assuming this Riddle character renamed himself something ridiculous after starting his little cult?"

"No, you're correct. He changed his name to Voldemort, which was actually little more than an anagram of his full name. It's due to this fact that I refuse to call him anything but Riddle. Calling him Voldemort would say that I agree with his little change in character and his beliefs, which is ridiculous since he's been trying to kill me for so long." Harry explained before getting onto the meat of his story "Now, you have to understand that there are actually two sides to this little cult; or, more to point of fact, two radical extremes to the same idea. The so-called 'Dark' and 'Light' sides, if you will." Harry explained, nodding when the General snorted in disbelief and amusement "Now, from what I've learned, late some time in 1980, a woman approached the leader of the Light side, a man named Dumbledore, and made a supposed prophecy which stated that a child would be born 'as the seventh month dies' whom would have some power that the 'Dark Lord knows not' and that 'either must die at the hand of the other, as neither can live while the other survives.' One of Riddle's Death Eaters, which was what his followers were called, overheard part of the prophecy while it was being made and reported it to his master."

"Long story short, someone decided the prophecy child was you." the General summarized, shaking his head over the sheer ridiculousness of it.

"Unfortunately, yes." Harry scowled lightly. Spirits he _hated_ prophecies. "There were a few other parameters to the stupid thing and, for reasons I'm not even going to begin to try and figure out, both Dumbledore and Riddle set their sights on couples that had gone to Hogwarts Preparatory, the boarding school I mentioned before, completely ignoring the fact that, in Europe alone, hundreds of babies were born on the same day I was. Myself and one other who fit _their_ parameters were born in the right time frame." he explained.

"In classic megalomaniac thought processing, Riddle decided to get rid of the threat before it became one. As soon as they learned from Dumbledore that Riddle might be after them, my parents went into hiding. However, they were betrayed by the only person who knew where they were, one of my Father's best friends. They made a bad decision in whom they put their trust in, as the man was, in fact, a Death Eater himself, and led Riddle right to their front door. October 31, 1981, my parents were murdered by Riddle. To this day no one knows what happened, but somehow when he tried to kill me he was gravely injured. Many thought he was dead, despite their being no body. I'm sure there was probably some mention of major strangeness, beyond your usual Halloween hijinks, going on around the greater UK area."

Thinking a moment, the General nodded, vaguely remembering something from the news about a large number grown men in dresses celebrating in the streets... vaguely. It was twenty years ago, after all. There might have been others, but it was the grown men –_old_ men even– that caught the attention of the news.

"I was put into the care of my Aunt after that night and, when I turned eleven, I was invited to Hogwarts as my parents were. Everything just went downhill from there." Harry continued, giving the man the summarized Mundane-friendly version of events that defined his teenage years. "Hogwarts is a place that's suppose to have security that could give Buckingham Palace a run for it's money, but in the four years I went there, there wasn't a single year I didn't have _something_ that tried to kill me." he stated, scowling at the thought; really, you'd think after the second time someone would have taken a look at the wards or something. "First Year our own Defense Professor, who was actually a Death Eater, tried to strangle me to death supposedly on orders from his master. Second Year was some nut that claimed to be the younger version of Riddle, his 'past, present and future', as he said. The kid set loose a giant venomous hybrid super snake loose in the school to get rid of the 'enemies of the heir', whatever that bullshit meant."

The General snorted in disbelief, not understanding how all of this _hadn't_ ended up in the national news.

"Third Year was actually pretty calm in you don't include my Godfather, Sirius Black, escaping from prison to come and finish the job his supposed Master started." Harry said offhandedly, enjoying the startled look the General gave him.

"Sirius Black?!" The General echoed, recalling _very well_ the story of when the man escaped. There had been rumors going around that the Brits had asked for help from the Special Forces just to catch the man, a mass murderer according to the news reports. "Wasn't he convicted for murdering fourteen people on the streets of London, including one of his best friends?"

"He was never _convicted _of anything. Convicted implies a trial, which he never received. Just thrown straight into the British version of Hell on Earth." Harry explained calmly. He couldn't even work up the emotion to get upset over that very dead topic anymore; after fifteen years it was so over-beat it was now more funny than anything else. "Sirius was innocent of the crimes he was accused of. I actually saw the man he was accused of murdering, along with those thirteen bystanders, but the officials believed Sirius had somehow _confused_ me. Still haven't figured out how that one works." he grumbled for good measure.

"How come it wasn't announced on the news?" the General questioned "You'd think with such a high profile case something would have been said."

"Don't know, to be honest." Harry shrugged "From what Sirius told me, it got all hushed up after he proved that he wasn't guilty of the crimes he was accused of. I guess the screw up was a bit of a governmental embarrassment."

"And how the Hell does someone prove they didn't kill someone thirteen years after the fact?" the General asked, almost regretting asking when a wicked gleam entered the kid's eye.

"By strolling into Scotland Yard and tossing the man he supposedly murdered on the Chief Commissioner's desk." Harry smirked, snickering lightly at the General flabbergasted expression. "Siri still won't tell me how the Hell he managed to get all the way to the Commissioner's office, carrying over a hundred pounds of unconscious traitor over his shoulder, without getting caught." Well, OK, it wasn't actually the Chief Commissioner at Scotland Yard, but the Director of the DMLE in the Ministry of Magic, Madame Bones, but the General didn't need him to split those hairs. He _still_ wouldn't tell him how he'd managed to pull it off.

Briefly pinching the bridge of his nose, the General decided after a moment that there was no way in Hell the kid could be bluffing. It was too crazy to be anything but completely true. You couldn't make shit like that up. Sighing, he leaned back in his chair and waved his hand for Harry to continue, wanting to get onto the main point.

"Fourth Year was more or less my breaking point." Harry began again, picking up from where he left off "Some genius decided to bring back a multi-school tournament that had been disbanded like a century ago because so many of the competitors were _dying_. Rules and supposed protections were put into place so that only those seventeen or older could even enter. The way it was suppose to work was one Champion would be chosen to represent each school. For the other two, Durmstrang, a Scandinavian school and Beauxbatons, a French school, whom their Champions would be were rather obvious, as their respective Headmasters only brought with them their best student and said students... groupies, I suppose you could call them. A boy named Cedric was chosen as our Champion." Scowling, Harry silently cracked his knuckles behind his back, _still_ annoyed, even after all these years, over Dumbledore's idiocy.

"Somehow, someone hacked the system that was being used to choose the Champions, putting my name in as the only student representing a _fourth_ school, leaving the program no choice to to declare me a Champion as well. I _still _don't understand _why_ I was forced to compete despite the rules stating I should have never been able to enter in the first place, I never could get a straight answer out of our Headmaster, but it nearly got me killed multiple times that year." Harry explained, pausing briefly for the obligatory sympathetic look before continuing. "There were three tasks we had to compete in, each testing a different strength. The final task was a twenty foot tall hedge maze, in which we had to not only navigate through _in the dark_ –because some genius decided it just wasn't challenging enough during the day where we could actually be seen by the audience and those that were suppose to be monitoring us in case we ran into something we couldn't handle– but we had to get past various 'moderately dangerous' to 'probably lethal if you screw up' obstacles –like that giant fucking spider that tried to eat Cedric–."

He paused again to allow the General's mind time to conjure up an image of something akin to the giant spiders from the Lord of the Rings, thus making him concluded that Harry was exaggerating slightly, before continuing.

"Long story short, once we reached the trophy in the center which was, ironically, the least visible area of the entire maze, Cedric and I were knocked out and kidnapped from the grounds by Riddle's Death Eaters." Clenching his fists, Harry grit his teeth, not for the first time wishing that he could go back that far and save the man that had become his friend throughout the year. Time Turners had far less limits than many believed, but _solid facts_ could not be changed. Harry _saw_ Cedric get hit by the Killing Curse. He _felt_ the death magic as the curse passed by him to strike Cedric in the chest. He and Moody had been over his memory of that night a thousand times, and neither of them had ever been able to think of a way to change what happened without causing a paradox. "Cedric never woke up. They kill him while we were still unconscious. I came too laying in a pool of his blood." A complete lie, but how does one explain the quiet, bloodless green caress of the Death Curse to one that doesn't know about magic? The emotion was the same.

The General's expression was softly sympathetic at his plight. Witnessing a death for the first time was never easy even for someone that was trained for it, much less a civilian teenager. There was, however, no pity in his gaze. The old soldier was experienced enough to have long since learned that pity implied that the one it was directed at had somehow failed.

Harry had not.

"I was given the distinct _honor_ of witnessing Riddle's 're-birthing' ritual that night, preformed by Pettigrew, my parent's traitor." Harry continued, an ironic little smile flitting across his lips. He'd been terrified at the time, but not that he looked back on it, Riddle really did look more than a little ridiculous. As often as his Uncle had used the term when he was growing up, he'd never seen a 'freak' the likes of which Riddle had turned himself into in his quest for immortality. "I don't know what the Hell Riddle had done to himself over the years, but he barely looked Human anymore. Pasty white skin, abnormally long limbs and fingers, blood red eyes... and somehow the crazy bastard managed to completely take off his nose."

"You gotta be kidding me." the General said leaning forward, allowing a moderate amount of fascination to enter his tone as Harry broke the solemn mood he'd created.

"I'm serious. Granted, at the time I was terrified out of my bloody mind, but now that he's dead and I've had time to really look over the events, it's a wonder anyone was ever afraid of the man." Harry snorted in amusement; and if _that_ just wasn't the truth. "Honestly, he looked like a great bloody albino snake... kinda died like one too, now that I think of it." he muttered, glancing up at the lights in thought.

"You killed him." the General stated bluntly, able to see that conclusion even without being told of the interim couple of years that obviously happened between events. The kid had already told him that he'd had 'private tutors' after Fourth Year before immigrating to the US.

"I did." Harry answered just as bluntly "In what was possibly one of the stupidest maneuvers in the history of stupid maneuvers, after I escaped Riddle and his Death Eaters I was returned to my Aunt's home with what amounted to a couple of rent-a-cops for guards. My Aunt and I had a long discussion and we decided that it wasn't safe for any of us for me to return to Hogwarts nor stay out in the open like I was–"

"Why weren't you put into protective custody? They may not have believed it was someone from Riddle's group who kidnapped you and your friend, but you were still obviously targeted by _someone_ who was willing to kill just to get at you." the General questioned before he could continue.

Pausing, a puzzled look made its way onto his face as the question wormed its way in, leaving him bereft of answers "You know... I have no idea." Harry answered honestly after a moment of thought, shaking his head. Honestly, he wasn't even sure the DMLE even _had_ a protective custody department. He'd have to ask Mad-Eye that the next time he got in contact with him. "It's not something I've ever thought to question. I grew up doing everything myself, making me immensely independent. After two attempts at my life, my first thought was to learn how to protect myself and deal with the problem myself, not ask for help. After returning to my Aunt's house, my automatic reaction was fundamentally the same one I developed as I kid when I was targeted by the local gangs of bullies: go to ground until I had the ability or a solution that would allow me to fight back." he shrugged. It was truth after all, even his story was somewhat edited "Our government obviously wasn't going to be more proactive, since there was no evidence and they had nothing but my word that Riddle was still alive and was making a comeback–"

"Of which they obviously didn't believe..." the General noted.

"Obviously... fucking politicians." Harry grumbled; if there was one thing he hated more than prophecies, it was politicians. Inhuman devil's spawn they were, every last one of them. His grumbling earned a snort of amusement from the General. "In any case, they said there was no evidence that _Riddle_ was the one who kidnapped us. Just someone who _claimed_ to be Riddle with a group of people in designer skull masks; sure they may have _looked_ like Death Eaters, but anyone can throw on a black robe and put on a mask and how did _I_ know what a Death Eater looked like anyway? I was told they'd investigate, but they were looking at it from a murder angle, not cult activity." he lied. He had to say _something_; no government outside Fudge's reign was was so incompetent that they _wouldn't_ look into a murder-kidnapping. "I left a letter of resignation for the school and one for anyone else that came looking for me, sent an email off to my Godfather, collected up my supplies and took off, planning to meet up with Sirius where we could touch bases with some of his own contacts from the darker side of society to get me some basic training. He was still technically a fugitive at that point, understand. Unfortunately... or fortunately depending on how you look at it, someone else found me first."

Getting into the story, the General leaned back in his chair and waved him to continue, knowing without even asking that he was only going to get the basics with little to no names. At least not real ones. With the level of training he was reading on the kid, his primary trainer was probably ex-military of some sort, likely a Ghost.

"My primary trainer, a man by the name of Mad-Eye Moody, caught up with me just outside of France. I'd known the man quite well previously, as our Headmaster had him acting as our Defense Professor at school as a major favor. I was rather shocked to learn that he had also, at one point, been apart of Dumbledore's little Order of the Phoenix." Harry explained.

"I take it this Phoenix Order is more or less the antithesis of the Death Eaters as far as this little two-sided cult goes?" the General clarified.

"Precisely." Harry agreed "Well, as it turns out, Dumbledore wasn't too pleased about me leaving Hogwarts... and Britain... and England altogether for that matter." he snickered, recalling the apocalyptic rage Moody had shown him in a Pensieve at one point or another. It was his misfortune that it was nearly impossible for a magic-user to naturally suffer from such things as a stroke. "I was their prophecy boy, after all. How could Dumbledore lead me to my _destiny_ of I wasn't there to be manipulated?" he snarked; fucking bastard. "Dumbledore sent Mad-Eye out to track me down and drag me back if need be. He ambushed me and proceeded to kick my then scrawny ass from one side of lower France to the other. Don't know how precisely I did it, but I apparently managed to impress him with how long I managed to last before he finally knocked me unconscious, despite having little more than an ounce of self-learned training. When I woke up, instead of dragging me back to England, he offered to make me his apprentice."

"Apprentice." the General echoed. Did that system actually still exist?

"Bit of an old fashioned term, but yeah, his apprentice. Considering what I knew of the man, and honestly not seeing any other way out of being dragged back to Dumbledore, especially considering the fact that he had me hogtied to a chair during the aforementioned conversation, I agreed." Harry explained. And the paranoid old soldier had, with ropes, chains, paralysis and what was possibly every sticking charm known to man. "It was later explained to me that Mad-Eye had all but completely quit the Order years before, only sticking around to keep an ear on what was happening between Dumbledore and Riddle in their little war. Dumbledore, it seemed, had a rather annoying habit of hording knowledge about what Riddle was doing, then not doing anything to stop him as he claimed he had formed the Order to do, saying something along the lines of anything they could do to stop Riddle would make them sink to the Death Eater's level. Mad-Eye, predictably, _despised_ that approach and thought Dumbledore's excuse was bullshit. I got in contact with Sirius shortly thereafter to let him know I wasn't dead, then proceeded to spend the next two years or so in what I _lovingly_ refer to as 'Mad-Eye's Boot Camp From Hell'."

"Mad-Eye's Boot Camp From Hell." the General repeated, snickering at the disgruntled expression the kid wore at the mere thought of it. Just from what little he'd heard of the man, he got the feeling they'd get along quite well. He wondered if they'd ever get to meet.

"Don't laugh. I swear, with some of the people I trained with, the man must have called in every favor he was ever owed from the past sixty years." Harry grumbled, removing his arms from behind his back for the first time since entering the office to pinch the bridge of his nose. Really, with the sort of career Mad-Eye had lead, it was no wonder the kind of people he knew, many of them as paranoid as he was and every single one of them capable of kicking liberal amount of ass physically, magically and politically. To the day, he honestly believed that if Mad-Eye got all of his acquaintances together in one place at one time, they could do what Riddle spent the past three decades trying to do in a fraction of the time and without having to resort to mass-genocide to do it. "I started out just trying to learn enough to possibly survive if I got corned by Riddle's Death Eaters. I ended my training with enough training to make a few career soldiers raise brows and question how the Hell long I'd actually been training." he explained, giving the General a pointed look. "Learning how to hide it took nearly as long as learning it in the first place."

Nodding, the General stood from his place and pulled out a stack of forms from his filing cabinet. He had to agree with the kid on that assessment. His assessment, despite the kid's young age, had indicated _years_ of training, at least five, probably closer to ten or more. To learn that he had only trained for two years during his teenage years was, frankly, shocking. It seemed impossible... unless... "Have you continued your training since you dealt with Riddle?" he questioned curiously, dropping the stack on his desk.

"Nothing as rigorous since I was sixteen, but I've kept up my basic routine. Why?" Harry answered. He didn't need to use Legilimency to know what the man was thinking, and he internally found it highly amusing. The man was _good_ at what he did. From the hints he'd dropped, Harry guessed he's read his training fairly accurately, closer than most others ever got. The General had read _years_ on him, and he had, in fact, trained for _years_. It was always amusing watching those who could read that much of his training on him try and puzzle that one out, as his physical age verses level of training indicated that he had been training at the level of a career soldier since he was five, which was quite impossible.

"I'd hate to see such a level of training go to waste. You've obviously got a gift kid." the General answer, pulling out another stack of paperwork from a different filing cabinet.

_'Yeah, it's called magic and a devise that let's me go back in time.'_ Harry silently answered, his amusement completely evaporating when the General dropped _yet another_ stack of paperwork onto the desk.

"From what you've described, I take it you left Britain in a hurry without letting many know where you were going?" the General questioned.

"Unless something drastic happened, only five people know what country I moved to and of those, only two know what _part_ of the country I moved to. My Godfather may know exactly where I live, but it's doubtful. Though it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Mad-Eye knows exactly which drawer I keep my underwear in; he's scary like that." Harry explained, wondering why he wanted to know.

"I'm also going to assume that those cultists are out there looking for you, then." the General said, more to himself than anything, snorting lightly at the kid's guess about his former trainer. He _really_ wanted to meet this Mad-Eye character. "I'd prefer not having to deal with extremists finding out about this little operation because tracked you down to the area. Carlson's the only one that knows you by your full name, therefore, unless we run into a legality issue, around here we'll be calling you Black instead of Potter. Do you have any objections?"

"None, General. As I stated before, both names are official. My Godfather and Mad-Eye both assured that I was familiar with being addressed by and responding to either in any given situation." Harry assured, making a mental note to cast a specified security ward on Carlson the next time he saw him to make sure the twitchy scientist didn't slip up. "So, I take it I'm going to eventually be allowed to see the light of day again?" he questioned.

"I see no reason to detain you. Depending on how long your hand holds out, you may just get out from under this mountain by the time your my age." the General all but grinned, waving a hand at the binder sized stack of paperwork he'd pulled out.

Groaning in despair, Harry sunk into the chair in front of the General's desk and pulled his favorite pen out of his pocket, silently contemplating whether or not he could get away with using his Time Turner to go back and smack himself before he accepted this job... or at least mess with the security cameras outside the office so he could _confund_ the General and sign all the paperwork magically.

As it was, it only took him three hours to read and sign everything, only moderately surprising the General that he actually bothered to read what he was signing. Far longer than he'd ever had to deal with in the past, but he'd still take the General's paperwork over a Goblin's; the General didn't use blood quills. Now _those_ were nasty. Luckily the magic on the quill made the wound heal automatically when used properly.

By noon, he was officially a member of the US Governmental research team, assigned to Sector Seven.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 02**

An hour after his paperwork signing marathon, Harry found himself getting out of the General jeep with his contact, Carlson, in tow, silently moderately annoyed, knowing, even without being told, where they were. He'd just spent forty-five minutes driving through an underground tunnel system with more checkpoints than he'd had to go through on the surface just to get on base, only to find himself under the Hoover Dam. A dam, of which, was only a half an hour away from where he lived in Paradise, south of Vegas. He had to drive an extra half an hour out of his way, on the highway, just to spend another hour going back the way he came underground.

Yeah, he was annoyed.

And what was worse, the General had told him that it was standard procedure, not just security for the new guy. Every member of the personnel going into the research center under the dam had to check in on the main base, before they were ferried to their place of work for the day in car loads, half scientists, half soldiers. Harry could only guess that this was to prevent imposters from trying to sneak their way in with the shift change. Hard to sneak in when you have to ride with people who are stuck in the same car with each other for at least an hour twice a day. The General would be introducing him to his future group personally, as he had every new soldier and scientist that had joined Sector Seven.

Loading into the elevator, Harry silently contemplated the possibilities of him getting an apartment in Laughlin or Bullhead City. Yeah, he'd be at least twice the distance from his actual work place, but at least he'd be just down the road from the main base where he'd have to start out his morning. Searchlight and Cal Nev Ari were closer, but they were both literally dot-on-the-map kind of towns, so the possibility of him getting a place there were far slimmer than going further south to the city, no matter how little he wished to live in an actual city. He hated cities.

"You're quiet, Mr. Potter-Black. Is something the matter?" Carlson questioned, breaking the comfortable silence that had fallen over them as they strolled through the base... comfortable for he and the General in any case. Carlson was as nervous and twitchy as he had been that morning. Harry was beginning to think it was actually his perpetual state instead of just a result of his dual master's expectations... especially since one of his proverbial master's had already approved of him.

"Just thinking about looking for a new apartment. I hate such an inefficient waste of gas." Harry answered... _partially_ honestly. His car didn't actually run on gas. But that was besides the point. "Maybe Bullhead; they're bound to have apartments. Laughlin might have some land if I want something bigger. That might actually be the better idea for the long term; I don't particularly like cities. And I don't actually own any land here in the Colonies, after all. It would be a good investment." he mused, more thinking out loud than anything else.

"Kid, we ain't been called 'the Colonies' in two hundred years." the General groused with an amused smirk "We had a little get together that we, around here, like to call the Declaration of Independence. It was kinda a big thing. Had quite a few very important political figures sign a rather large piece of paper with our written demands against Britain. I can arrange to have you shipped to DC to go see it if you like. I'm sure we can find a big enough box. Packing peanuts might be in short demand though."

"Hardy har har." Harry replied dryly, rolling his eyes "Habit, General. I may be a US citizen now, but I unfortunately grew up in tiny suburbia Hell with an Uncle who seems to believe we live in a bizarrely mixed world with a James Bond government, fashion that never moved past the sixties and an imperial influence that never saw the American Civil War, much less the Declaration of Independence." _'And a mentor who was actually alive at the turn of the last century and unfortunately influenced a great deal of my vocabulary without me even realizing, damn you Mad-Eye.'_ he added silently. Keeping on ear on the surrounding conversation of the entourage of scientists and soldiers that was passing around them for the shift change, Harry's senses focused in on a faint power source unlike anything he'd ever felt before. It wasn't magical, precisely, but it didn't feel like any technological power source he'd ever felt before either. Whatever it was, it was definitely _alive_.

His ability to sense life was something that he'd never shared with Mad-Eye, keeping it as an ace up his sleeve. And it wasn't something he gained from the Hallows; he'd always had it, using it in his youth to help him avoid Dudley and his friends. It had merely grown more sensitive after he'd gotten back the Cloak of Invisibility, then gained a sharper edge when he found and cleansed the Stone of Resurrection from Riddle's Horcrux. The ability came to full fruition after he took the Elder Wand from Dumbledore, just before crossing over into the other realm through the Arch of Death.

It was this ability that was the primary reason he generally avoided overpopulated areas, like cities. Large concentrations of animals weren't too much of a problem; with the exception of the more intelligent magical animals, they were just there. Humans, on the other hand, had a myriad of emotions that swarmed about them constantly. And with emotions came thoughts. Harry learned quickly after the final battle that, if he didn't shield himself carefully against the tempest of Human thoughts and emotions, he could very easily become _overwhelmed_ by them. He'd fallen unconscious more than once before he finally figured out what the problem was and adjusted his mental barriers.

Stepping into what appeared to be the security center for Sector Seven, Harry's attention snapped to an approaching presence that reminded him disturbingly of a Malfoy; in other words, arrogant and cocky with a arrogant holier-than-thou attitude and a belief that they were always right... until a bigger bully came onto the playground, then they were a brown-noser. After catching sight of the man as he strode through the doorway, Harry mentally adjusted that assessment. Not just a Malfoy; _Draco_ Malfoy. 'Mama's boy' got added to the list. They were soon joined by a man Harry recognized as the second of Carlson's proverbial master's, the one that planned to use Carlson as a scapegoat if he didn't live up to their expectations.

"Gentlemen, thank you for joining us." the General greeted, introducing the two groups. "This is Dr. Harrison Black. Black, meet Tom Banachek, head of Sector Seven's Advanced Research Division. He runs virtually everything here in the Center and is our primary liaison between Sector Seven and the Pentagon." the General explained before waving a hand to the Mama's Boy, as Harry had already mentally designated him, much to the misfortune of his ego in the unlike event the man ever found out. "This is Agent Seymour Simmons. He is the head officer of Sector Seven's Field Agents." His experience assured that, even as hidden as it was, Harry picked up the underlying note in the General's tone which told him that the man didn't respect Simmons any more than Harry thought he himself could. He just reminded him too much of Draco for him to do so.

"Nice to meet you gentlemen." Harry nodded, resisting the habit to bow, not wanting to stick out with these men even more than his accent and record would already ensure. As Mad-Eye always said, only a fool purposely paints a target on his back. "I look forward to working with you." He didn't need to use Legilimency to know Simmons had already dismissed him of whatever worth he might have due entirely to his youth. It was painfully obvious by the way he quite literally looked down his nose at him.

Spirits... an unholy mixture of Malfoy's prideful, cocky, mama's boy attitude and Snape's air of tolerant disdain; that he abhorred your presence but he would put up with you because he had to.

Harry internally sighed in exasperation, sending a questioning thought to the Fates: What had he ever done to deserve this?

"Well, if all the paperwork is all filled out, then the only thing left is to discover where you'll be working." Banachek said, seeming to be blissfully unaware of his agent's attitude... either that, or he'd been working with him for so long that he just ignored it... probably the latter.

"Sir?" Harry questioned, not sure how to take that statement.

"We've discovered over the years that some become uncomfortable or ill around the technology you've been hired to help study." Simmons answered curtly "The radiation the two main pieces give off isn't dangerous, as far as we can tell, but we have never been able to identify and pin down any specific correlating factors between those who react badly."

_'That reassuring.'_ Harry grumbled mentally, tentatively sending out a prob of magic to get a feel for what he'd soon be facing as he followed Banachek and the General out into the hall. It wasn't until their elevator reached the floor they were getting off on that he once again picked up the strange energy source he'd felt earlier, leaving him to concluded, after a magical poke at the surrounding walls, that whomever had built the place had inadvertently stumbled upon the perfect hybrid to block out all forms of energy: a mixture of iron, lead and, strangely enough, silver.

Iron was the least magically reactive substance known to man, shrugging it off and scattering it harmlessly; it had even been known to stop the Unforgivables. Lead had a tendency to make Potion's and other magically sensitive objects explode and what it didn't it absorbed, including most known forms of radiation. Silver, opposite to iron, was highly reactive to magic, soaking it up and storing it like a near bottomless dry sponge. Between the three substances, virtually all magic, radiation, or any other forms of energy trying to leave the area were either blocked and rebound, scattered, or absorbed. Given what he felt, he was certain it was only due to what he was that he sensed anything at all.

Coming upon a set of large hanger doors, Harry felt the energy seeping out from the weak points in the wall ghost across his magic, a sense of dread creeping upon him, leaving him very much not wanting to enter the room beyond. Every last bit of his well ingrained sense of self-preservation shrieked at him to turn around and flee. Another part of him, however, one that was relatively new compared to that other instinct, quieter, but just as distinct, told him that he _needed_ to see the source; he _could not_ leave something that caused such a reaction in him as an unknown.

Still... a bit of warning might been needed.

"General."

"Black?"

"I believe I may be one of those Mr. Simmons mentioned." Harry admitted calmly, holding an arm up for them to see in a surprisingly unruffled fashion considering how violently his hands were trembling.

"You sound amazingly composed for someone who looks like they're ready to bolt." Banachek observed, curious as to the contradiction.

"Don't get me wrong," Harry snorted "My sense of self-preservation is currently screaming at me to turn around, flee and don't look back until I'm a few states away. But I didn't just spend three hours signing paperwork to just leave because I'm _uncomfortable_."

And if that wasn't just the biggest understatement of the millennium. _Uncomfortable_ didn't even begin to describe what he was feeling.

"I do request, however, that someone drags me out of the room once I stop being able to function." Harry requested, pointedly ignoring the snorts of amusement from his companions; they clearly thought he was joking.

As soon as Simmons opened the personnel door, Harry drew his barriers to the their highest to protect him from the energy coming from the... Being, within. All of his senses except his vision cut off the moment he step through the doorway, allowing his focus to become almost entirely internal as the part of him that was usually content to lay quietly in the background of his mind surged forward. It prodded at the sludge-like life energy that came off the mechanical being resting against the far wall of the cavern, hooked up to what was possibly every piece monitoring equipment known to man, giving him far more information about the being in the first thirty seconds than these Humans had collected in the past century.

The Being, despite it's mechanical form, was most definitely _alive_. In some sort of deep stasis, but alive. And old. Very old. In all his travels, with all the people he'd met and trained with, he'd never felt anything as old as this Being. Even the Immortals he'd had the privilege of meeting at one point weren't as old and, short of a Ancient Vampire, he'd believed he'd never meet anything older. One had even known the first Master; Harry _remembered_ him from his memories as the Pharaoh. This Being, however, wasn't ageless like they were. Just incredibly long lived.

The thing that was most predominate, however, wasn't it's age, nor it's size –which was, incredibly, larger than even the largest of Giants he'd ever seen–, nor the rather intimidating spikes covering it's frame in some sort of form of armor. It was the feel of corruption that oozed from every square inch of the Being's body. Spirits, was it corrupt. To his mind, the life energy that floated sluggishly around the room was tainted darkly with a sludge he associated with the purely negative aspects of emotion and thought. Greed, anger, hatred... insanity... chaos. He'd never seen something's life energy tainted so entirely. Even _Voldemort_ hadn't been so darkly tainted.

Outside his mind, he was vaguely aware of Banachek and the General hooking their hands under his arms as his legs ceased to be able to hold his weight, carrying him out of the room with alarm as they realized that his previous request hadn't, in fact, been in jest. His probe was mostly cut off as Simmons slammed the personnel door shut, staring at him with a distinctly freaked-out expression; if he'd been capable of it at the moment, Harry probably would have laughed at him. As it was he was more concerned with turning his physical senses back on as the two senior members of the base checked his vitals, attempting to speak to him.

His hearing came back just in time to hear the General say, "–fucking Christ, Black. I thought you were kidding!"

"I did warn you." Harry said, annoyed when his words slurred slightly.

"How the Hell did you know you'd react like that?" Simmons questioned suspiciously, giving Harry a look at another aspect of his personality: chronic paranoia.

Goody.

"I know my mind _intimately_, Agent Simmons. And I know how I react to certain stimulus." Harry stated flatly, brushing off the hands of the two that carried him out as he sat up from where he'd been slumped against the wall, pinching the bridge of his nose as his physical senses came back fully, his power floating lazily about him, refusing to go back to it's normally passive behavior. "I merely took what I was already feeling _outside_ the door and multiplied it by several times. The mind can only take so much before it shuts down to protect itself. Wasn't too difficult to guess what my reaction would be."

"You've experienced something like this before." the General stated. It wasn't exactly a question, but there was a lit in his tone that requested he expound on that statement.

"Once. Never did figure out what caused it..." A lie "but I felt it long before I physically reacted to it." That's what he got for poking at the magic of a pissed off Immortal, even if the anger hadn't been directed at him.

"We've had negative reactions to the NBE-1 before, but nothing like that." Banachek observed "A feeling of general discomfort or feeling ill, I can tell you from experience, but I've never seen someone just shut down."

"I'm special." Harry said cheekily, forcing himself to stand, getting the circulation going back in his legs. It was just a guess, but he could almost guarantee that every one of the aforementioned were, in the very least, magically sensitive. It wasn't just his power as a Master that made him feel sick around the Being, it just made it more acute. Now that he'd gotten a solid taste of the... _NBE's_ life energy, he could feel something similar less than a thousand yards away. It was... different, however. It didn't have that same inherent corruptness that the NBE did– and what the Hell did that acronym even mean? "What the bloody Hell does NBE stand for?"

"Non-Biological Entity." the General snorted, crossing his arms as he leaned against the wall next to him "Which, from what I hear from the geeks, isn't entirely accurate, but we've been calling that thing in there that for so long that it would be useless at this point trying to call it anything else... though some of the older geeks still call it the Iceman, due to where it was found. Personally, I just call the BFR." he paused momentarily for effect, giving Simmons ample time to reapply his disgruntled expression before elaborating "Big Fucking Robot."

Harry shared in his silent amusement, as he was certain that the General had only said as much to annoy Simmons. He got the distinct impression it was something of a source of entertainment for the General, knowing that he, technically, outranked the man, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

"Sooo... I believe you said there were two pieces of technology around here?" Harry said after a moment, resisting the urge to stare down the hall towards where he could feel the other... whatever it was. They didn't need to know that he could sense them like that.

"You sure you wanna check it out, Black? People usually react worse to the Cube than they do to the robot." the General questioned, his expression saying that he already knew the answer but had to ask anyway for those that couldn't read him.

"Like I said before, General. I didn't just spend three hours signing paperwork to just leave. I'm not taking my ball home until after I've exhausted all avenue's." Harry said, a slightly devilish smirk pulling at his lips as he cracked his neck loudly, making Simmons cringe. Looks like he just found a passive way of annoying the man. "Let's go see this Cube of yours."

-oOoOoOo-

Standing before the blast doors that separated them from the mysterious 'Cube', Harry silently brought his barriers up to maximum ahead of time, allowing his power to wrap around him like a protective cloak, waving at Simmons to get a move on when the Agent hesitated to open the personnel door, clearly fearing another reaction like the one he'd had before. Seeing he wasn't going to back down until he'd tested himself against the second piece of alien technology they held, the General nodded in agreement, leading their group into the room, all three senior members keeping an eye on him in case he started to shut down again.

Staring at the giant Cube in silently awe, Harry allowed his power to flow outwards a short distance unseen, testing the power from the thing, dropping his barriers a small amount when he wasn't assaulted as he had been before. They were correct in saying that it was very similar to the Being in the other cavern. More powerful even, by a factor of about a thousand if one wanted a _cautious_ estimate. And, like the dark Being, Harry could sense that the Cube was somehow 'alive', thought not in any sense that these Humans would consider it so. It felt, in many ways, like a Horcrux, only without the whole 'kill in cold blood and break a piece of your soul off' thing. No, it felt as if, whatever this Being was, it's _entire_ self was within the Cube. Like the Cube was somehow an extension of it's original body. Considering what he'd seen in the other room, the thought wasn't entirely impossible.

"Black?"

"Hmm?" Glancing at the General briefly, Harry nodded, allowing his barriers to drop back down to normal levels. It wasn't the power of the dark Being that bothered him. It the was the corruption. The power this vessel gave off was certainly impressive, terrifying even if one considered what it could be used for if they could ever harness it, but it was far from overwhelming. The Earth itself gave off similar levels of power and that was always a buzz in the back of his mind. He could also sense that, while it did have a feel of corruption to it, the sludge was actually _coming_ from the dark Being in the other cavern. The two Beings were connected somehow, and the Dark One was _tainting_ this one. He'd have to see if he could change that. "I believe I may have found my area of research, General."

"Are you certain, Dr. Black?" Banachek questioned. He couldn't help but think that this kid was a total walking contradiction. He was well spoken and clearly well-educated, yet had a feeling that he could only compare to a predator about him. He was sarcastic, and at times he could swear there was some sort of insult going through his head, generally directed towards Simmons if he wasn't mistaken, somehow all without being offensive. The NBE-1 had him collapsing, a far worse reaction than he'd ever seen, and yet the far more powerful Cube, which only one out of every fifty of the on-base personnel could even come into the same room with without being sick, didn't seem to bother him in the least. And the General actually seemed to _like_ him, which was odd in in itself considering the General only tolerated the Geeks because they were vital to the project.

"I'm fine. I know you said people usually react worse to this thing, but it doesn't feel anything like the robot." Harry explained, his power prodding the confines of his new den, as the part of him that was Wolf mentally declared, allowing him to absently calculate where he was would need to set up the ward markers to make his ward most effective in containing the Dark One's corruption. "Is that the reason there are so few people here?" he questioned, noting the distinct lack of scientists in the room compared to how many he'd noted in the cavern with the Dark One.

"Partially. Most here can't stand being near either the robot or the Cube for long periods of time without breaks." Banachek explained "We are well aware of the strange radiation both items give off, but as it was explained, it doesn't appear to be harmful. We aren't sure why we react the way to do to them. Personally, after being around either of them for awhile, I just get have to get up and leave. I can't bring myself to stay, no matter what I'm currently working on."

"I don't know what you're feeling with the Cube, Mr. Banachek, but the robot made me feel like I'd just been dipped in a vat of sludge made of every negative emotion in existence, with an extra dose poured directly into my brain just for good measure." Harry explained, putting to words the feeling of sheer corruption the dark Being gave off.

"Yeah... that seems pretty accurate." the General agreed after a moment of thought. He'd never been able to put the feeling to words before, but that summed it up fairly accurately. "Well, if you aren't about to collapse on us, I guess this is what you'll be studying. However, you don't officially start until tomorrow. Today I'm going to introduce you to your transport group while Banachek gets the research notes together and grants you access to the system. Simmons, your presence is no longer required."

"Yes, sir." Harry and Banachek acknowledged as the Mama's Boy all but huffed and stormed off... if his sense of professionalism hadn't prevented it. Harry had to give him a point for that.

-oOoOoOo-

Later that night, long after all but the skeleton night crew had gone home, deep within the officially nonexistent base containing two mechanical alien Beings, the shadows of a darkened corner of the Dark One's cavernous prison softly pulsed with life, admitting an Wolf-like animal with red fur and pupiless glowing green eyes. As it stepped forward into the room, the shadows it had stepped out of seemed to cling to it's mane and paws in a eerie, fire-like manner. At least, that's how one would have described the creature if they could even see it. At the moment, however, the creature, called only Abyss by the few who had ever seen it, was completely invisible to the senses of any it didn't wish to be sensed by.

Glancing around the room, empty except for it's permanent occupant, Abyss snorted in contempt at the complete lack of security before the fire-like shadows spread about his body, revealing a young man with a loose mane of dark hair, dressed entirely in black, with a black, Wolf Kabuki mask covering his face. The guise wasn't necessarily required, as he had yet to be recognized in his true form when dropped his public mask, few had ever seen his beast form and he was _still_ completely invisible, but he had decided not to take the chance. Seeing the lack of personnel however...

_'After all the hoopla I had to go through earlier just to get in here, you'd think they'd at least have patrols once the main crew went home. I could have walked in starkers and fully visible for all the security around here.'_ Abyss snorted mentally, contemplating leaving a message for the General in that regards while his power spread about the room, allowing him to calculate the exact parameters he needed for the ward he was about to set up. It took some doing for him to ignore the sludge-like life-energy the Dark One gave off, deftly deflecting that which tried to attach itself to him, his power stealing the core of it, leaving the sludge to dissipate into the aether.

He briefly considered doing the same to the Dark One, tearing it's _Ba_ from it's mechanical frame, extinguishing it's _Ka_ and ending it's life, but ultimately decided against it as he set to work on his original plan. He was uncertain how deeply it's corruption laid and it would take a scan far deeper than he was willing to risk to discover it. He also got a feeling anytime he looked at it, that which struck a cord deep within what made him what he was. This Being, this ancient Dark One, was the reason he had been awoken as the Third Master. Voldemort had been a mere shark compared to this Leviathan; both dangerous, but on vastly different scales. This Being was a threat to his world, one far greater than Voldemort had ever dreamed of being and by all rights he should have ended its existence right there. But he knew, somehow, that it's presence was still needed. Something needed to happen before he ended the Dark One's life, lest a threat far greater descend upon his planet.

Moving slowly about the room, trying to avoid running directly into the disgusting corruption filled life-energy floating about, he silently pulled a smooth, fist sized stone from the bag at his side, sliding it into the wall as if it was soft clay instead of impenetrable stone, the rune carved into it's face glowing briefly as he pushed a small amount of magic into it. The process was repeated continuously as he moved about the room, pausing only briefly when an overweight balding scientist walked into the room with a large cup of coffee, muttering under his breath about the unfairness of the late night shift.

Snorting again in contempt of the stupid Human, Abyss rolled his eyes and completed his circuit, slipping into a shadow without a backwards glance, emerging in the cavern with the Cube. Spreading his power about the room again, he was only mildly surprised that there was no one in this room either and he felt that no one would be coming either. Apparently the night crew didn't take their jobs very seriously or, like the idiot in the other room, considered it a punishment.

With no need to move slowly like he had in the other cavern, he finished his circuit quickly and stepped through a shadow into the hallway between the two. Building up his magic and power to the levels required to pull off this ward, he pulled free his pendant and focused through it, mentally envisioning all the ward stones he'd placed in the two caverns. _**"Eu ordeno a Escuro ser aprisionado, porque está envelenado**__** Ka **__**para capacitar a gaiola eu agora construír. Conter esa escuridade, esa mácula que envelena a vida. Que non alcanzar os que eu chamo baixo a miña protección. Eu reivindico este lugar, onde o río fluxos de enerxía e é creado. Como o Mestre da Morte, eu mando. Entón, eu teño falado, así sexa!"**_ he intoned, releasing enough power directly into the ward stones to light up Vegas for a year.

Exhaling slowly, the young Master carefully withdrew his power, pleased when the wards snapped into place with a crack that would have been audible to anyone in the area with more than a Squib's worth of power. As it was, he was certain the fool in the room with the Dark One was wondering what the Hell he had just felt, as one would have had to be dead not to. Prodding at the wards with his magic, he paid no mind to the fool as he rushed past him towards what he'd been told was the command center, where they were suppose to report any major events or discoveries, as rare as those were these days.

Satisfied with his wards, Abyss gave a mental finger to the Dark One and slipped into the shadows, heading for home with the intention to use his Time Turner to get a few more hours of sleep, completely unaware that he had just, unknowingly, almost completely severed the connection the insane once High Protector of Cybertron had with the All-Spark which allowed him to track it across the Universe, all the way to Earth.

-oOoOoOo-

A few days later had Harry ready to bang his head on his console and incinerate the entire pile of paperwork on top and around it, folders inside filing boxes stacked about like someone's kid had gotten in and decided to build a box-fort. It wasn't that it was paperwork he had to fill out, it was paperwork in predecessor had left behind, research notes... supposedly. A dark snarl was what Banachek walked in on when he entered the Cube chamber to check on Sector Seven's newest acquisition, which did nothing to lessen his previous preconception of a dangerous predator.

"You look like you could use a break, son." Banachek commented, wondering if the young researcher could actually get the pile of paper before him to combust if he glared at it any harder. If ever a glare could do it...

"My predecessor was a complete incompetent. I swear to Maat, if he's not already dead, I'm going to kill him myself." Harry growled, resisting the urge to shove the whole pile he was currently working on off his desk. It would only make things worse. As it was, he had only just barely gotten a general timeline out of the damn thing. "The man had absolutely no sense of organization! I've been working on it for three days, and I _still_ don't know what information is suppose to refer to what! I'm not even certain that the folder's in the same box are even on the same subject other than the Cube in general!"

"Yes, as I recall, Mr. Smith was a rather... unique individual." Banachek said diplomatically "He was actually the oldest person in the department... probably the oldest person on base as well. He had been with Sector Seven for most of his life before he collapsed six months ago; stroke." he explained. Harry hummed thoughtfully as his gaze swept across the piles of research around him. He could easily see why. Running his thumb across the Stone imbedded in his Cypher pendent, more out of habit than any real need to focus through it, he seriously contemplated dragging the elder researcher's soul from whatever Afterlife it resided and forcing it to explain what his organization system was; there was no possible way he _didn't_ have one, no matter how it currently appeared. No researcher_ didn't_ have a system, even if it made no sense to anyone else. The term 'Researcher' was practically synonymous with 'Organizational System'. One just had to figure it out.

"The past couple decades before his attack, we had to give him an assistant just to scan his research into the computer we gave him as he went." Banacheck continued, unaware his the young researcher's thoughts "He refused to use it."

"Computer? There's a _computer_ in there?" Harry questioned, his eyes darting about the boxes, looking for the elusive life-saving piece of modern technology. In the entire time he'd been here, he'd not seen a hint of anything but paper. Sending a thin tendril of magic into the pile, he almost literally dove in after it when it pinged off a piece of technology, coming up a few minutes later with a triumphant cry, hugging the laptop to his chest like a favored teddy bear.

"Son, you _really_ look like you could use a break." Banachek repeated, raising a brow at the young man's behavior. He'd never heard of insanity being a symptom of being around the Cube or the NBE-1 for too long, but one never knew. The young researched seemed determined to _not_ be a statistic. "Come on. Bring the laptop, we'll go get some coffee."

Harry was unable to stop himself from scrunching his nose in disgust at the suggestion, but nodded anyway, following his department head out of the room. "Thanks, but I brought tea." he answered, mentally digging through his storage space back at his apartment, trying to remember what he did with his old messenger bag. He hadn't used the thing since he got his doctorate, but it was loaded with so many protective spells that a truck could run over it and not damage the content. The more important feature, however, was that the inside was a null-magic area, meaning any relatively sensitive electronics wouldn't be effected if he let his magic go. Of course, he got all his electronic devises from the Sagebrush Market Square, the magical district in Nevada, and they_ came_ shielded against magic, so that didn't really matter. He'd originally enchanted the bag to carry Voldemort's Horcruxes until they could figure out how to destroy them without damaging the container.

"You're not going to last very long with that attitude, Dr. Black. Most who work here live on that stuff." Banachek smirked "You'd think, going to school where you did, you would have gotten hooked on it. I know a few Brits that moved over here. They're constantly telling me that the tea we have here is horrible."

"It _is_ horrible, but I'll still drink it over coffee. I have a large box garden in my spare bedroom to grow my own herbs and the like, tea included." Harry divulged; herbs, tea and common potions ingredients that didn't require specialized growing environments "And my friends in High School and College _did_ try and get me hooked on coffee. The fancy coffee's with the syrups and stuff in them aren't bad on occasion, but it's really more a desert-like treat then something I'd like to drink on a regular basis. I have yet to find regular drip coffee that doesn't taste like battery acid filtered through mud." Of course, he'd tasted quite a few Potions that were just as bad.

His last statement, unfortunately, came just as they stepped into the mess hall, several scientists and soldiers looking up to give him a dirty look, causing Banachek to chuckle. "Told you so."

Harry just shrugged "Hate me all they want. Just means more battery acid for them."

Quite a few of the soldiers snorted into their cups at that.

"What do you drink other than tea? Surely that can't help when you're tired?" one of the scientists from the Dark One's chamber questioned as they sat down, steaming cup of water rapidly darkening with the introduction of a ball full of loose leaf tea that none of them could figure out where he pulled from.

"Water when I'm just wanting something liquid." Harry shrugged again "Cider as an alternative."

"Cider?" one of the soldier's spoke up in confusion.

"Similar effects as coffee, without the addictive properties." Harry explained, taking a sip of his tea "And it tastes better then your battery acid."

"You're not going to call it anything but that, are you?" another soldier questioned, rolling his eyes.

"Never." Harry smirked, booting up the laptop. He then proceeded to shock scientist and soldier alike by clicking through the reports about one a second, shutting everything back down only ten minutes later with a thoughtful hum.

"Did you just...?" Banachek trailed off, not quite sure he had actually just seen that he thought he saw.

"Just?" Harry questioned, glancing away from the thousand-mile stare he'd gained while processing what he'd just read. It was a lot of information and his predecessor _had_ been thorough in his research... but he was still an incompetent when it come to organization.

"I believe they're shocked that you just went through nearly six hundred pages of the chicken-scratch Smith called research notes faster than most of them can read one." another scientist –Michelson, if he remembered correctly, one of the few that routinely worked in the Cube chamber with him– spoke up from behind his newspaper, absently sipping his own coffee. After only a few days, those that worked in the Cube chamber with him had become use to his more vivid mental abilities. They all knew he had a photographic memory and quite often went through reports via speed reading; they just didn't know it was aided by Occlumency, giving him absolute perfect recall of even complex equations and long technical reports.

"It wasn't actually all that bad. You should have seen my handwriting back when I was in Secondary School and Sixth Form." Harry smirked "Well, OK, it wasn't actually all that bad during Secondary, but we were required to use fountain pens for all formal reports, so that was an unmitigated disaster on my penmanship." he fibbed. It really had been a disaster, but he didn't want to deal with the even _worse_ questions he'd get if he told them they had to use _quills_.

"Fountain pens? Really?" a scientist from the next table over questioned "Where the Hell did you go to school that didn't use _computers_?"

"Hogwarts Preparatory. And it was very... Traditional." Harry explained.

"How do you manage to make that word sound medieval?"

"Because it was." Harry shrugged "It's one of the primary reasons I chose to pull out and go to a normal public. The school had no power. When it got dark, it got _dark_. Our only light source at night was torches and candles. We had no phones, no computers, no televisions or any other form of electronic entertainment. Mail was delivered the old fashioned way." he explained "Basically, the moment we stepped off the train, we were five hundred years in the past. The modern uniforms we students wore were, in fact, probably the most _advanced_ thing in the entire school." He was answered with stunned silence by the various scientists around them, most of whom had gone to private schools themselves.

"Damn, kid! No wonder you quit. Why'd you apply to go there in the first place?"

"I didn't." Harry replied honestly "Hogwarts is one of those 'Don't-bother-applying-because-you're-not-getting-in-unless-we-invite-you, and-you-probably-won't-get-invited-unless-your-family-has-been-going-here-for-the-past-several-centuries' type schools. I was on the roster practically from the moment I was born. Got an letter when I was eleven saying that I'd been accepted into a school I'd never even heard of." he shrugged "I really only decided to go when my Aunt told me my Mother had been invited as well, which was shocking considering she was the first in her family. New blood and all that."

"Damn. Talk about trying to create an insular society." one of the soldier muttered.

_'You have no idea.'_ Harry mused inwardly, chuckling has he finished his tea. "Well, chaps. Back to the grind for me. Now that have this," he said, holding up the laptop "I'm going to shove Smith's boxes back into whatever little Hellhole you all pulled them out of before they try and smother me again." he grinned, walking out among the chuckles of his co-workers and the security. He had to admit, he'd been a little wary at first, but he was beginning to think he could like this job. If anything, just being able to study what was probably the most ancient Being in _existence_ was a chance he'd be stupid to pass up.

Now if he could just find some way to communicate with it...

-oOoOoOo-

Four months into what was possibly the best job he'd ever managed to snag, if he did say so himself, found Harry idly scrolling through the reports on the Dark One compiled by the previous shift as he walked down the hall towards the Cube chamber, deftly stepping around the halls other occupants without even looking up from the touchscreen tablet magical disguised to look like a paper notebook that he was flipping through. Why, one might as, was it magically disguised? The answer would be, primarily, because it was _technically_ a magical devise bought from the Sagebrush Market Square. Non-technically? Because the technology wouldn't be available to the non-magical public for at least another year, probably two. The only reason the thing in his hand even ran was due to the runes etched on the motherboard. The company that made it, whom had its fingers in possibly every major computer company in the world –including Apple, Microsoft and HP– hadn't _quite_ figured out yet how to crunch everything they wanted into the "tablets", which were suppose to be about the dimensions of a thin book, without resorting to magic to expand the inside or supplement something electronic with something magical, like runes. Geeks took their computers apart routinely, after all.

He also had a relatively normal laptop –top of the line and magically enhanced, of course–, but he used that for his schoolwork and it was also disguised to look like Smith's old computer when he was using it on base, an illusion he stripped away when using it outside the compound. Both of which were never more than a couple feet from his person. That, naturally, was par for the course for any of the researchers he worked with. They were _all_ very possessive of their laptops, even if they were technically property of the USG and never left the compound for security reasons. And they weren't actually suppose to bring their own electronics onto base, again, for security reasons. Phones and such were suppose to be declared at the check-in back at the main base and left in their lockers while they were working.

It was grumbled about, daily, by his co-workers and the soldiers alike, but they conceded to the fact that rules were rules and for very good reason considering the subject matter they were studying... for them in any case. _They_ didn't have magically expanded messenger bags that could easily hide a fighter jet if he could figure out how to fit it through the opening. If Sector Seven was smart, they would have hired magical folk as well and gotten some wards and magical security set up around the base. They, however, did not. It was apparent, from what he'd pieced together, that not even the _President_ knew about Sector Seven. And thus, no magical support. The only wards on the whole base were those that Harry himself had been setting up around the ever-expanding area he'd claimed as his den. He figured, at the relatively slow pace he'd been going, he'd have the entirely of Hoover Dam and the immediate surrounding area warded by the end of 2001.

It was slow going, primarily, because he had to be careful to not only fry the relatively delicate electronics riddled throughout the entire area, but he was using more 'power' than 'magic' to disguise his activities from the _magical_ government. As Hoover Dam was a tourist attraction, a massive magical ward going up around the area would _definitely_ catch the governments attention. And, despite the fact that he didn't play well by others rules –as shown by his blatant disregard for the 'no electronics' rule– he was still obligated to keep the secret base he worked at a secret, even from his own government. And, while he could technically break that secrecy at any given moment, he rather _liked_ the life he was building, and it would be annoying to have to set up a new identity somewhere else.

Plus, he'd not have his completely badass job anymore. Which would be equally annoying.

No, it was really better to help Sector Seven keep itself secret. Really, how the Hell they hadn't gotten themselves _caught_ yet was beyond him. The Devil's luck or divine interventions, if he had to guess, as they didn't have the ability to Obliviate people, like the British Wizarding World frequently did.

In any case, in the four months Harry had been working there, he'd come to the shocking realization that he was, literally, the _only_ magic-user on the entire base, scientist _or_ soldier. Oh, that wasn't to say there weren't magically restricted, what the British called 'Squibs', or magically sensitive personnel. There were plenty of those. Hell, Banachek himself was magically restricted, though it was obvious he didn't know of the magical side of his family. But he was the only one who actively _used_ magic. The chances of that were so astronomically impossible that he'd actually dove into the law section of the Sagebrush library the very same day he'd realized the fact, just to make certain he hadn't accidentally broken any laws. But there it was in plain black and white. Once again, Harry Potter had managed to do the impossible.

Snorting, Harry carelessly dropped his bag by his desk and flopped down in his chair, exchanging his tablet for his laptop, sufficiently disguised as the one he was _suppose_ to be using. When it came to his luck at achieving the impossible, sometimes he didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It was only after he had booted up the computer to start working through the latest data coming from the monitoring equipment attached to the Cube that he consciously released the fact that, for once, he wasn't the only one in the room. There was, in fact, nearly a dozen of his co-workers checking various monitors, frequently glancing back towards the doorway.

Lowing his barriers a fraction, Harry looked around suspiciously. The overall mood in the room was... nervous? Yes, definitely nervous, every last one of them. Was there a bigwig coming in for an inspection or something? "Hey, Michelson! Something going on you all forgot to warn me about?" he questioned in lieu of poking through their heads.

"Ah, that's right. You haven't been working here long enough to know." Michelson mused, waving him up to follow, explaining as they walked through the halls towards an area he'd never had reason to enter before "We discovered several years back that, if we harness enough of the energy the Cube gives off, we can seemingly turn electronics into miniature versions of the NBE-1. Unfortunately, it takes a few months to build the power back up to try it again and the superiors have been wary about trying again since the last time."

"What happened? And why haven't I read anything about us studying these smaller robots?" Harry questioned, already getting a sinking feeling in his gut. He had already determined that both the Dark One and the Cube were alive, which meant that, in all likelihood, these electronics transformed from power siphoned off the Cube were also alive. What happened to them? Where were they that he hadn't seen or sensed them or read about them?

"The containment unit failed." Michelson sighed "A young researcher named James Farr was kill when the Nokia we used the gathered energy on transformed and immediately began destroying the room. According to Rebecca, err... that is, Rebecca Howard, I don't think you've met her yet, they tried reasoning with it and it almost seemed to be working, unlike most of the others we've created, until the security that was with them opened fire. It just went crazy after that, and James was killed." he explained "As for why you haven't read about it... beyond what we get in the first few minutes, we _haven't_ been studying them. It's been our orders from the first time we created one of these things, even before Banachek took over, that we aren't to keep the mini-NBE's functional. The order has only been reinforced since the accident." he sighed in regret "I can't help but feel we're going about it the wrong way, and most of us that study the Cube agree, but the higher-ups don't listen to us lowly lowly researchers. They have their way of doing things, and damn the rest of us." he scowled, waving his hand at the door they were approaching and the two scientists standing outside it. "Samantha? Terrance? You wanna take Harrison in there with you? He's never seen the transformation before."

Looking over the newbie, the two older scientists shrugged and nodded. "Sure, why not."

"Come in, kid. Seal the door behind you."

Nodding, Harry warily followed them in despite his own warring conscious, curious in spite of the horror growing in his chest. He was quite certain that, if this was going to be anything like what he expected it to be, after he witnessed this he was going to have to find a nice dark hole to hide and be sick in, his badass job seeming less and less badass with every passing moment. Sealing the door, he couldn't help but feel shocked by the claw marks and bullet strikes that seemed to litter the room.

"How many times has one of these Beings gotten out?" he questioned, tracing his fingers over one of the claw marks, picking up residual emotions from it. Anxiety. Fear. Hopelessness. But strangely, no anger. No insanity. No... corruption. The Being that made them was afraid. The attack was a fear reaction. Brushing his fingers over one of the bullet holes, he flinched back slightly. _That_ mark was different. The Being that made _that_ was just about a corrupt as the Dark One. But what was the difference? Why was one pure and afraid why the other was corrupt and seemingly mindless?

"A couple times. We've been improving our containment methods. The last one shocked us because it didn't _break_ out like the one that shot up the walls before we fried it." Terrance said, dropping a phone into the wired up clear box in the center of the room. "The lid just _popped_ open according to the security footage. Went Freddy Kruger on the walls the moment someone made a grab for it."

"So, in conclusion, if the crazy robot gets out of the box, don't make any sudden movements, Black." the gun-totting security he'd barely acknowledged beyond marking his position stated.

Nodding slowly, Harry ignored the world as he found his eyes riveted on the box, his magic and power picking up the build-up of energy even before the hum started, his power cloaking around him protectively, encouraging the other three occupants to forget he was there. Trapped in the room as he was, he had to close himself off from the emotions they were giving off... or rather, the emotions Terrance was giving off. Samantha just seemed to be alight was cautiousness and scientific curiosity while the guard was merely wary. Terrance, however, was practically _radiating_ maliciousness. He didn't care about the information they might get out of this; like a small boy pulling wings off a fly, he just wanted to see it in pain. It disgusted him.

Clutching his pendant, Harry sunk deeper into his cloak as his power picked up something being forced down the line that he had prayed that he wouldn't feel. Something the others clearly couldn't see as it was shoved into the box and the phone along with the energy from the Cube; a small glowing orb, alight like a highly concentrated plasma ball. A _Ba_. A _**soul**_. He couldn't bring himself to move as the phone transformed into a small, bipedal robotic Being, emotions of loss and terror simply _radiating_ off it as it looked around at them. He could only imagine what they looked like to the tiny Being, each of them easily ten times it's size. It was no wonder it was afraid. It would be like waking up in a room full of _giants_. Sending a sliver of power out, Harry willed his cloak away to the perception of the... baby. Yes, it was a _baby_, torn from it's parent and trapped in a box, surrounded by strange looking giants. Quietly, he slipped forward, sending feelings of calm and protectiveness, silent promises of protection and love.

Slowly the baby calmed in response to his power and murmured soothing nonsensical words, retracting the little weapons it had deployed, aiming without firing despite it's fear. So concentrated as he was on calming the child, he was taken completely by surprise when Terrance slapped his hand down on the button at his side, sending bolts of electricity into the box and the newly born soul within, vindictive pleasure radiating off him as he grinning down at the writhing Being.

"What the Hell are you doing?! It was calm!" Harry cried, stepping back into the perception of the world, reaching for the child with hand and power as it's scream of terror and pain clawed at him from the physical and astral plains, begging him for help. Before he could do anything, however, it's body began to smoke and it's _Ba_... vanished, it's screams cutting off, leaving only the ghostly echo's in the room and in his mind.

"Orders are orders, kid. After we get the data we need, we kill it." the scientist shrugged. The words might have been more appeasing if it weren't for the vengeful smirk on his lips and cruelty in his eyes, seemingly unaware of the displeased expressions the other two wore. "Besides, it's just a _machine_. Not like it could actually _feel_ anything."

"Sure _sounded_ like it could feel well enough." Samantha muttered, scowling at him as she unsealed the door, sensing that the younger researcher needed to _get out_ before he broke the door down.

She was right, and Harry blew right past her before the door was technically wide enough to fit his frame, slipping partially into the shadows to get through. He also blew right past Michelson and Banachek, the child's screams echoing in his mind. He didn't stop until he was back at his desk near the Cube, his power washing over every other person in the cavern, causing them to simultaneously feel the need to all but _flee_ the room. They were too indoctrinated towards the feeling the Cube gave them to ignore it or even wonder about the source, clearing out in a practiced, orderly manner, his cloak forcing them to completely forget his presence.

The moment the personnel door shut, Harry called up the wards and all but erased the room from existence in the minds of the Humans, collapsing into his chair with a tearful gasp, drawing his power in around him in an attempt to console himself, sobbing apologies to the child he was unable to save and the Being within the Cube he was almost positive was the parent. What the Hell kind of place did he work for?! It was just a child! _A baby!_ It was no wonder they attacked. He would too, waking up a box surrounded by giant aliens! The fact that they thought they were just soulless machines was a cold comfort and, in the end, totally irrelevant. The fact was, they were _alive_. They had _souls_. And these bastards just _killed_ them. _Enjoyed_ it even.

He didn't know how long he laid there, sobbing against his desk, when his power picked up a flicker at the edge of his senses, separate from the energy the Cube was giving off, causing him to jerk up in time to see the orb-like _Ba_ of the child he'd just watched get electrocuted by one of co-workers phase through the wall, flickering dangerously as it wobbled slowly towards the Cube. He could tell, even without his power, that it would never make it. Just escaping and making its way here had weakened and depleted its _Ka_ considerably. It would destabilize and die before it made it to the safety of its parent.

Dropping his mask completely, the young Master dropped the reins on his power entirely for the first time since his fight with Voldemort, allowing it to flood out of him, tendrils shooting out, encasing the child's soul in a protective embrace, radiating feeling of apology and fierce protectiveness, promises of security against the cruelty of the world... and the bastards he worked for. It struggled briefly as he pulled it into his arms, rocking it gently as he continued to assure it, calming only when the meaning of the words and feelings it was receiving sunk in, pressing closer to his chest and the stabilizing warmth his power provided. He could tell, now that his power was so firmly around it, that it wasn't necessarily the escape that had destabilized it. It, like any other soul, couldn't exist on the physical plain without a shell to hold it in place and protect it, like a body. Ghosts existed because they absorbed emotionally charged magic as they were separated from their bodies, allowing them to remain if only for a short time. It was why ghosts were only generally found in emotionally charged areas or areas of high concentrations of magic.

Cuddling the _Ba_ close to him, Harry was distracted by a soft beep from his previously forgotten computer, drawing his attention to the strangely blank screen and the blinking cursor there in.

**Ξ Thank you. Ξ**

Reading the words, Harry cocked a brow "Thank you?" he echoed, unsure of what to make of the words that had spontaneously appeared on screen.

**Ξ For the newspark. Ξ** he was answered **Ξ I would not have been able to reach her in time. Ξ**

Blinking a few times in incomprehension, Harry found his gaze drawn to the giant Cube hovering above his head. "Was that you?" he questioned.

**Ξ Yes. Ξ**

His brow drew higher as he leaned back in his chair, staring up at the ancient artifact. Well, hadn't he been saying he wanted to find a way to communicate with the Being within the Cube? "Well, in that case, you're welcome." he answered, cradling the... –newspark? Is that what the Being called it? Yes,– newspark to his chest, cocking his head to the side when a tendril of power brushed against his own floating about he room. It took him a minute to work out what the Cube was trying to accomplish from the scrambled rush of information in that relatively small tendril. "You wish to communicate more directly?" he questioned uncertainly.

**Ξ Yes. Ξ**

Exhaling noisily through his nose, Harry made himself more comfortable, absently conjuring a footrest while his mind worked through figuring out how to do this without frying his brain. He was under absolutely no illusion that the computer-like mind of the mechanical Being within the Cube wouldn't completely destroy his, probably by complete accident, if he couldn't figure out a way to limit his exposure. "The Human mind is a deceptively fragile thing. It can only process so much information at once before it starts shutting down to protect itself." he explained, hoping the Being would understand what he was trying to convey "If you wish to communicate directly, you need to connect only the smallest fraction of your mind to mine, otherwise you may destroy my mind."

**Ξ | | | I understand. Ξ**

__"I sure hope so." Harry murmured, dropping his barriers a small fraction, allowing his power to connect with that from the Cube. Instantly the chamber faded away as he was drawn into a vast darkness that he could only assume was the mind of the ancient Being. He was quick to draw his power around him in a protective bubble as he was bombarded by voices and images he couldn't even begin to make sense of, mentally shifting into Abyss as he curled in on himself for protection, fending off the assault to the best of his ability ᴪLess!ᴪ he cried out in anguish, the word echoing even as the bombardment lessened a fraction, slowly draining away as the word reverberated around him.

It didn't stop the fear from welling up, however, as he realized that the vast world of metal beneath his trembling body was, in fact, the mental representation of the Being within the Cube, making it an _immense_ magnitude larger –if one were to try and compare a mountain to a grain of sand– than the Dark One. It was... intimidating, to say the least. ᴪLess.ᴪ his mental voice whispered as he searched around the best he could without moving, trying to distinguish _some sort_ of recognizable feature on the vast landscape. Slowly, the world began to shift beneath him even as the images assaulting him faded away and the voice began to make _some_ sense... at least to the point that it was no longer attempting to melt his brain. It was still like listening to a completely foreign language with no reference.

On the horizon of the metal world he found himself on, five pillars appeared on the horizon, slowly drawing closer to him as the voice shifted to something recognizably Human, but still non-understandable. As the pillars drew within several miles of his position, they became recognizable as _fingers_, striking him with the shocking realization that he was actually _laying_ on the ancient Being's _hand_, its mental representation –and presumably the tendril of power connecting them together– rapidly shrinking. The voice became distinctively male and was _definitely_ in the Human tongue... or more to point of fact, _every_ Human tongue.

ᴪPick a language I can actually understand, please.ᴪ Abyss requested with a small amount of irritation. He was quite certain he was going to have the mother of all migraines when this was all said and done. He felt his nose scrunch in annoyance when the Being did as he asked, taking he request a little too literally, as it was now speaking in all _three_ Human languages he could speak, somehow seamlessly switching between them ever few words, if not _every_ word. ᴪOne language! Pick _**one**_ language!ᴪ he all but demanded as the assault on his mind lessened to what had to be less than a hair's width fraction of the ancient Being's full presence, the vast metal world shrinking down until edge of the palm he was curled on was only a meter or so beyond him in either direction.

**Ξ I... apologize. Despite your warning, I greatly overestimated the processing power of your mind. Ξ** the ancient Being said, his voice soft and steady, almost as if he was afraid to harming tiny Human with just his voice... which, if he thought about, wasn't entirely outside the realm of possibility. He'd seen Giant's do it, and this Being, even shrunk as his mental presence was compared to originally, was a mountain to their tree.

ᴪConsidering my research predecessors estimated that your vessel predates the lifespan of our _planet_ by several hundred _billion_ years, that's not entirely surprising.ᴪ Abyss conceded, slowly, cautiously uncurling himself, taking in the ancient Being for the first time, the Ancients One studying him just as closely. He was surprisingly... Human, in appearance. Oh, there was no mistaking the fact that he was a mechanical being, apart from his sheer size, but still... perhaps Humanoid would be the better description. Aside from the basic body structure of a torso, two arms and legs, hands and feet-like structures, his facial structure was also very Humanoid. He hadn't been able to tell with the Dark One, as it's face, from the eyes down, were covered with a faceplate of some sort.

A soft warble drew his attention from the ancient Being to the _Ba_ floating around in the darkness beyond them, dancing, it seemed, to a tune only it could hear. Willing himself away from the Ancient One's hand, Abyss transformed back into his Humanoid form and stepped out onto open air, shielding himself from the sudden influx of information that assaulted him. The Ancient One had apparently been protecting him. Now that he knew what to expect, however, he was in no danger of being overwhelmed unless he tried to take it all in at once. The random information floating around was no bother and it was far less than what had bombarded him originally. ᴪWhat may I call you, Ancient One?ᴪ he questioned, floating over to the young soul. It spun around him like a glowing little moon, cooing in delight until his hand shot out with Seeker's reflexes, snatching it from it's orbit to hold to his chest as gently as a Snidget, pulling a whirr of pleasure from it.

**Ξ I have had many names. My first children called me Primus. Ξ**

ᴪPrimus, derivative from the word prime, meaning first or source.ᴪ Abyss mused, a few half formed theories and ideas falling into place ᴪMay I assume you are the originator of the Beings such as the Dark One in the nearby chamber?ᴪ he questioned inquisitively, as if he wasn't speaking to what was, essentially, _a God_. This... Primus, was hardly be the first Earthbound God the young Master had had the pleasure of speaking to his his existence. Though he was, admittedly, the first since he was Harry and definitely the first that wasn't bound to the Earth as he was.

**Ξ Dark One? Ξ** Primus questioned, raising a brow ridge. Abyss couldn't help but wonder if such an expression was natural to the ancient Being's people or if the Ancient One had learned to mimic Human countenances. **Ξ Yes. He is called Megatron. He was one of the rulers Cybertron before he lost himself to the Darkness. And, yes. I am the creator of those such as he. Ξ** Primus explained **Ξ What may I call you, High Protector? Ξ**

High Protector? That was a new title. ᴪLike yourself, Ancient One, I have had many names.ᴪ Abyss confided, feeling that, of all Beings, he could trust this one with his secrets. Primus had had _decades_ to communicate with the people of Sector Seven, but hadn't. That in itself was... telling. ᴪI was born Harrison Potter-Black, heir of the Most Ancient and Noble Houses of Potter, my Father's family, and Black, that of my Godfather, who adopted me as his heir shortly after I was born. It is the name most know me as, the... mask, if you will, to hide my true self. To the few whom have seen my true face, I am now known only as Abyss. Several years ago I came into possession of three artifacts known as the Deathly Hallows. When brought together, mastered by a single person during a time of conflict, they create a Being known as the Master of Death.ᴪ he explained, silently trying to think of a way to explain his story. Well, this landscape was entirely mental, wasn't it? Perhaps he could...

With a moment of concentration, two figures appeared behind him, one male, one female. Both were years older than him, frozen in their prime of life, and all three from obviously different nationalities. Primus noted with no small amount of intrigue, a relatively rare experience considering what he was, that the three Humans were similar enough in appearance that, despite their differences, they could have easily been from the same family. Aside from the dark hair and sun kissed skin, the oddity that really stood out was the fact that all three had identical green eyes.

It was an oddity that few ever caught in Harry... and that few remembered. Despite being told for years that he looked exactly like his Father, except for his eyes, it wasn't his Mother he got them from. No, he had been born with blue eyes, like most babies, which had faded to the blue-gray indicative of his Black blood, from his Great-grandmother, Dorea Black. It was only after Voldemort tried to kill him and he was marked as the primary candidate of the Third Master, that his eyes turned green. It was only due to a lack of any other explanation that they thought they were his Mother's eyes.

ᴪOn this planet, there are a percentage of people capable of manipulating the natural energies of the world, containing a Core of this energy within themselves. They call it magic. This ability has existed for nearly as long as life on this planet has and Humans, despite what many of them like to think, were hardly the first to gain it. If anything, they were the _last_.ᴪ Abyss explained, then proceeded to explain the Hallows, the Keys of Life and Death... and the Masters they created, the Balance Keepers of the world.

He told of the life of the Pharaoh, awoken to combat the Evil that twisted the magics across his desert lands, attempting to choke the world in dust. He told of the life of the farmer's child who became a Priestess, who awoke when the dark, twisted magics known as the Unforgivables were created, specifically the Death Curse, which shattered the bonds between the _Ba, _the _Ka_ and the _Khat_ –the soul, life-energy and body–. And he told of his own, about his awakening by his enemy, Voldemort, at the tender age of one, marking him as the Third Master, the mantle that he took up as soon as he was old enough to handle the power the three Hallows contained and the transformation that followed.

To be a Master, one had to not only gather the three Hallows, but give themselves to Death. The First Master died in the desert, revived under the shocked gaze of his High Priest. The Second Master was killed by the previous holder of the Cypher who murdered her family, reviving when he back was turned to plunder what few riches they had. And he, the Third Master, threw himself willingly into Death's waiting arms behind the Veil to save his Godfather from the same fate.

ᴪI appear Human to those who don't know how to look, but I am not. My kind has appeared on this world only three times in our history.ᴪ Abyss explained ᴪEven with the wisdom inherent from the two previous Masters and the highly practiced knowledge of my powers, there are many things I don't know about my kind. I know we are created when a threat approaches that jeopardizes the balance of the world. We are meant to eliminate that threat and restore the balance. But I don't know who or what originally created us. As the Pharaoh, as soon as I was awoken, I simple _knew_ what my task was. Why I had been created. Same with the Priestess, with the bonus of gaining the memories of the First Master to aid her. I gained the memories of the both of them when I full awoke, but until recently my task was unclear.ᴪ

**Ξ And now? Ξ** Primus questioned, a note of curiosity in his tone.

ᴪI'm still not certain. But I now know it somehow involves the Dark One.ᴪ Abyss admitted, staring off in the distance to the unseen point where the enormous robot laid unwillingly in a forced hibernation ᴪI don't know if your people have anything similar, but on this planet we sentients have something we call a 'gut feeling'. It causes our heart-rate to pick up, our muscles to tense, a tightening in our core and we will swear we can hear a self-perceived siren or bell in the back of our minds. When it happens, we just _know_ that something is the right choice or something is happening. We don't know the reason for it, we just _know_, and those of us who have learned to recognize it _react_ to it, immediately. It's subconscious reaction, something deep in our minds that makes a connection we consciously haven't or senses something we don't actively realize.ᴪ he explained ᴪThe first time I saw the Dark One, Megatron, everything that makes me a Master zeroed in on him. He is the focal point of the chaos that will soon plague my world. By all rights I should have killed him that day... and yes, I am quite capable of doing so.ᴪ he stated, recognizing the Ancient One's expression as one of shock and moderate disbelief.

**Ξ You believe you can kill a Being larger and older than you by such a magnitude? Ξ** Primus questioned.

ᴪI don't need to _believe_. I _know_ I can.ᴪ Abyss stated, holding the _Ba_ against his chest up slightly ᴪYour people are alive. You have _Ba_ and _Ka_. A soul and the power which allows life to form. My Power –separate yet intricately connected with my Magical Core, my _Ka_– allows me to connect with the _Ba_ and _Ka_ of others.ᴪ he explained ᴪIt is why we are called 'Masters of Death'. When faced against something that can tear your _Ba_ from your body and extinguish the _Ka_ that allows your soul to remain in this world, it doesn't matter how _old_ or how _large_ or how _powerful _you are. At all times I sense every living soul around me. I sense the _Ka_ that every living being contains and gives off in minute amounts, even if they don't have the ability to control it. It is only the barriers around my mind that keep me from going insane from it.ᴪ

Staring at the mental representation of the tiny organic floating before him in the vastness of his mind, Primus didn't doubt that statement in the least. He could feel it to be true in the power that surrounded the organic at all times. Had sensed it from the moment this... _Abyss_ had entered the chamber containing his current vessel. He merely hadn't known _what_ he was sensing until it was explained to him, having never experienced such a power before. 'Abyss' was truly a aptly chosen designation, for a lesser Being trying to staring into the young Master's power would undoubtedly feel as if they were staring into one. It was vast and seemingly unending... like his own. The young Master may not have known what created his exceedingly rare kind, but Primus believed _he_ did.

The same thing that created himself and his fallen brother, Unicron.

The One.

**Ξ Finish your story, young High Protector, and I will tell you mine. Ξ** Primus requested.

Nodding, Abyss took a moment to remember where he had been before continuing. ᴪAs I stated, the first time I saw Megatron, everything that makes me a Master zeroed in on him. He is the focal point of the chaos that will soon plague my world. By all rights I should have killed him that day, but the same sense told me that such an action would be folly. That something needed to happen before I did so, lest something else more terrible will befall us.ᴪ he expressed, shaking his head ᴪI honestly can't think of what could possibly be more severe, but before I saw him, I couldn't think of anything worse than Voldemort, so it's entirely possible.ᴪ

Nodding, Primus gently took the organic and the tiny spark he held protectively in his hand, the world around them shifting from a vast emptiness to the vastness of outer space, scene appearing as he spoke. **Ξ There are many things that could be worse than my former High Protector. Megatronus Prime, the one Megatron took his name from –the first and most powerful of my children– is now called only The Fallen. But even he is only a Sparkling compared to his master, my twin brother, Unicron. Ξ**

Abyss had to resist the urge to snort at the irony of that statement. The "Evil Twin Brother" syndrome on a Godly cosmic scale. Go figure.

Unaware of the young Master's brief thoughts, Primus continued, explaining about the vastness of the multiverse and how he and Unicron were, in some realities, the last of a waring pantheon of Gods, while in others they were singular entities created for the sole purpose of exploring the fledgeling universe for their creator, Primus existing in all at once while Unicron existed in only one, but could move between them at will. How in all they were the creations of the primordial sentience of the universe, the One. How Unicron began to devour the essence of the worlds, stars and even the very fabric of existence itself, seeking to return the multiverse to the infinite Nothingness, while Primus himself sought to stop him and protect the existence the One had created, resulting in their battle spanning time and space.

History played out around them, showing how, in pure combat, Primus was no match for his brother, as Unicron powered himself from the destruction he wrought, growing stronger with every world he destroyed. In cunning, however, he was his brother's superior, shifting their battle from plane to plane until he was able to trick Unicron into following him onto the astral plane, and then back to the physical world once more, only to force his essence to manifest _inside_ a primordial planetoid, submitting himself to the same fate inside another, leaving them both trapped within prisons of his own making. With this sacrifice he had hoped to contain Unicron's evil forever. Unfortunately, they were both ageless Beings and, over time, Unicron learned to psionically shape his prison into a giant metallic planet, forcing Primus to follow suit or be destroyed in his helpless state.

He showed how the war reached a new level when Unicron learned to further transform his planetary form into a gigantic robotic body. Instead of copying him –and essentially putting their war right back to the place it had been before he'd managed to trap him– Primus adapted the idea to suit his own ends, creating smaller robotic Beings that could change their shape like Unicron could. The first of Primus' children, the Thirteen, alive with a fragment of his own spark, were his soldiers in his war against his brother, the tipping point that allowed him to fight him on an even level even in direct combat. Time moved on and Unicron was temporarily defeated after falling into a black hole, leaving Primus' children to flourish into a living society, more and more being born until the entirety of his planetary body was alight with their cities.

Abyss watched in awe as he was literally _shown_ the history of a race older than the age of his entire planet, older than even the fabled ageless Elves and Fae, watching the Cybertronian people prosper and expand from the original Thirteen to _billions_, evolving to adapt to the areas they lived in, occupying sea, land and sky alike. He found himself drawn to the sleek forms of the fliers and their beautiful ring-like city of Vok, even _before_ Primus told him they were called _Seekers_ of all things. His animagus form may have been that of a Wolf, but he still believed there was no feeling in the world greater than the air rushing past you at a couple hundred miles per hour. A brief inspection revealed that Primus' own chosen form was damn close to the Seekers he was now seeing, designed for flying free on the air. He supposed it was in response to the unconscious –or perhaps not so unconscious– desire for freedom from his self-induced prison. Just because one willingly allowed themselves to be imprisoned didn't mean they had to _like_ it.

History moved on before him, showing the Cybertronian society build itself up to a Golden Age of supposed peace and prosperity. Supposed. Abyss could see, just from the historical overview he was getting, that the society stopped advancing once it reacted it's supposed Golden Age. It was a sad but universal fact that social growth was born from conflict. Purely peaceful societies were stagnant societies. This was especially true for the long-lived.

It didn't take long for Cybertron to reach that stage, a vast dark underbelly forming with the formalization of a rigid caste system, the rich growing richer and higher in power, doing anything to _stay_ in that position. It was a basic mark of any society. Where there was the super-rich, one would surely find those barely surviving. While the Towerlings lived a life a luxury, the low-class muddled by, fighting tooth and nail for every right they were _graciously_ granted by those in power, the lowest classes even being denied the basic right of having _a name_.

With that in mind, it was really no surprise to Abyss when Primus began showing him the civil war that broke out, that eventually lead to his current vessel being launched into space to protect it and keep it out of the Dark One's hands. What did surprise him, however, was the motives of the Dark One... no, of _Megatron_ before he became the Dark One. The formerly low-class Mech started out with the simple plan of destroying the caste system that was slowly killing their society; it was surly some sort of divine intervention that he was able to break out of that mold and gain the title he did, with his younger brother at his side on the non-military side of things. It was only after he came in contact with the artifact that held the Fallen One that he was driven to the brink of insanity and his actions became much more straight forward and, dare he say it, obsessive to the point of ignoring all secondary objectives.

Seeing the former High Protector in action before that point, however, he couldn't help but compare him to _Snape_ of all people. A more vicious, ruthless and hands-on Snape, but Snape nonetheless, right down to that annoying ridiculous jealousy and the holding of a petty grudge over something that was in no way the recipients fault. Really, Orion Pax hadn't exactly _asked_ to become a Prime. It wasn't the kind of appointment that one simply said 'no thanks' to.

From there, with the source of that which kept them alive no longer on the planet, it was no surprise that the war became one of attrition, eventually leading to the abandonment of Cybertron once every Being on the planet not contributing to the war was put into a forced lock down to save their lives. Though Primus' essence, his _Ba_, hadn't been there, he was still intimately connected with his prison body as well as the node known as Vector Sigma.

As a multiversal singularity who existed in multiple realities at once, Primus' _Ba_ was naturally split –or perhaps merely tendriled– between multiple locations. Due to the belief's he'd been raised with as the First and Second Masters, and subsequently taken on as his own, it was a concept Abyss had some difficulty understanding but little believing. Primus was a _God_, after all, even if it wasn't a term he'd personally use. He was already aware of the fact that a God's existence didn't necessarily follow the same laws that a mortal or immortal's did.

The portion of Primus' _Ba_ he was connected to –the Cube or AllSpark as the Cybertronians called it– was only a fraction of the whole. Hell, even _all_ portions currently in their reality were only a fraction of the whole. Once again, it was an... intimidating thought. A humbling thought, even if he was far from arrogant. Because of what he was, Abyss could be considered a God of his world, but even his existence was little more than the newspark he held against his chest when compared to that of Primus. Though he could snuff out the life of the Dark One with barely half a thought, a Being who was older than the entire Human race, he couldn't even begin to imagine how much power it would require to even grasp the portions of Primus' _Ba_ which existed in this reality, much less separate them from their _Ka_. It was an experience he was glad to have had. It would keep him grounded in times when he head started getting too big.

-oOoOoOo-

Sighing heavily as his mind fully disconnected from the Ancient One's, Abyss lazily pried his eyes open, only to blink in confusion at the sight of an unfamiliar ceiling. Scrubbing his eyes, groaning at the stiffness in his muscles, he stared uncomprehendingly at the still unfamiliar ceiling before spotting a an envelope stuck there, summoning it to him with an absent flick of his fingers, shifting more comfortably on the bed he'd woken up on.

_To My Undoubtedly Confused Past-Self,_

_ Hello, Me! It's you here. And believe me, you're going to see the humor in all this when you're in my place. _

_ You've been passed out speaking to Primus (or possibly just recovering from the overload; haven't figured that one out yet) for the past three days. Needless to say, unless you want the bosses panicking because they can't find their Cube Chamber, or you for that matter, you better use one of our Time Turners to go back and move your younger-self to the room your currently in, which you're going to form in the corner of the Chamber and ward with the mother-of-all repelling charms._

_ Trust me, by the time you've finished and done a bit of meditation, you will have calmed enough to not feel the intense need to commit genocide against ¾ of everyone we work with._

Pausing in thought, Abyss agreed that, if it wasn't for the Calming Charm he could feel slowly eroding, undoubtedly placed there by his future-self, he probably would have already been up and cursing at that point. He definitely needed to do some meditation, if only to fully pull his power back in. It had been years since he'd released it so thoroughly, and he doubted it was going to be easy to suppress it again.

_And now that you've thought about it and agreed with me, there is a vial of Headache Reliever on the table next to you. Once the Calming Charm wears off and you start getting angry again, the migraine is __really__ going to kick in. If you reach out, you'll be able to feel that I'm a Hell of a lot calmer than you're going to be in a few minutes. Take the General up on his offer and use the base gym. Beating up of men twice your size it surprisingly therapeutic... so is blowing shit up, but there isn't a desert in the world that could hide it with how you're going to feel in a few minutes._

_ Get a move on, Me. Your past-self awaits._

_ Weasley Hugs and Sloppy Padfoot Kisses, _

_ You_

Staring incredulously at the letter, Abyss couldn't help but eye the Headache potion laying innocently on the bedside table, wondering what the bloody Hell was in it to make him act so... insane. Uncorking the top as the Calming Charm fell on it's last leg and the migraine he'd been anticipating began to kick in, he sniffed the potion suspiciously, scanning it with every damn spell Mad-Eye had ever taught him for this sort of thing until he was absolutely certain it really was nothing but Headache Reliever. Downing it in one go, he lazily rolled off the bed into the shadows it cast, emerging from the low ceiling of one of his safe houses with a soft thump onto the bed.

It was just in time too as, just as the potion began to work and the charm fully wore off, the fury and despair he'd been feeling before speaking with Primus came back in full, throwing him into a rage so violent he irreparably destroyed every everything not charmed unbreakable –and a few things that were– before he came out of it sometime later, heaving for air among the rubble. If it wasn't standard practice for him to put one-way Silencing Charms on all of his dens, his unknowing neighbors would have undoubtedly already called the cops –and possibly the Wildlife Rangers– in a panic.

Glancing around at the destruction, Abyss chuckled hollowly, vanishing the debris as his emotions short-circuited in the wake of his uncontrolled rage. He hated letting his anger go like that. It always left him feeling hollow. And especially when his power and magic were as unrestrained as they were. His little temper tantrum had, undoubtedly, just scared the piss out of anyone and anything even remotely magically sensitive in a few hundred mile radius... scratch that, with his power completely unbridled, make that _anyone_, magically sensitive or otherwise, within a few hundred mile radius.

Sighing heavily, he sunk into his cloak and stepped again into the shadows, briefly flitting by his apartment to grab a Time Turner before shadow walking to one of his more remote safe houses, just to be certain there would be no one there. After that, it was merely a matter of flipping back time twenty-four hours, resting until the Turner cooled back down and doing it all over again until he reached a the general time he was aiming for. It was an action so over-practiced the act of going back in time was almost mundane to him at that point. He had, after all, only been doing it for almost a combined two decades, if not longer. He hadn't really been actively counting while using the magic in High School, nor college, though he had had a habit of going a week or two normal time then shadow walking to some remote safe house and going a week or so Turner time until he made it back up to the point he'd left, using the off time to train or just relax so he didn't burn himself out like Hermione had almost done in their Third Year.

Glancing around the safe house while hidden from the world, just to make certain he didn't have any unexpected guests, Abyss nodded, released his cloak and cast an obscure variation of the Tempus spell, which let him know he was in the early morning of the day he needed to be. He and Moody had dug the spell up after the dozenth or so time they'd gone back and realized they'd either overshot or undershot their intended timezone, the spell telling them not only the time, like the Tempus, but the local date as well. Nodding again, he took the time to clean himself up so he appeared as he had before he had more or less dropped into a magical coma before slipping back into his cloak and into the shadows, appearing in the Cube Chamber just in time to see his younger-self pass out as Primus' ancient mind connected with his, the newspark at his chest chirping in concern and confusion.

Chuckling in moderate amusement, he allowed his cloak to fall and silently moved over to the back of the shadowed cavern where no one ever occupied due to it's bad lighting, levitating his laptop over to himself when he felt a surge of utter confusion enter the power floating around the room, even as he began to shape the stone into the room he awoke in and his younger-self groaned in pain.

**Ξ How? Ξ** the questioned appeared on his screen.

"You aren't the only one that can be two places at once, Lord Primus, even if I'm not a multiversal singularity as you are." Abyss answered, absently conjuring a table so he wouldn't have to keep levitating his computer. "Though I suppose at the moment there are technically at least three of me running around the planet. Couldn't tell you where my oldest self is though. I haven't actually spoken to him since I left England. I myself am from three day in the future, which is how long, real time, you will either be speaking with my younger-self or how long it took me to recover from the experience. Won't figure that one out until we get back to then."

**Ξ I was under the impression time travel was beyond your people. Ξ** Primus mused. He had only run into one continuity were Humans had access to time travel technology –a continuity that was considered a work of fiction in this one, amusingly enough– and even that was technically at least fifty years from the perceived 'present'.

"Technological time travel, yeah, probably will be for decades, if not centuries." Abyss agreed, floating his Time Turner up in front of the computers inbuilt camera even as he began loading up his little hideaway with every ward known to man to prevent detection, short of the Fidelius. That was one very useful spell that had one _very_ serious flaw in it that he had yet to figure out how to get around. He supposed he would one day –after all, he had all the time in the world, even _without_ using his Time Turners–, he'd simply never put any hard research into it. It was never really a priority. "Magical time travel, on the other hand, has been available for over a century, if not longer. This is called a Time Turner. They're usually highly restricted items, due to the fact that creating a paradox could probably kill us all, but my old mentor, Alastor, and I, have come in possession of several over the past twenty years or so while I was training for the war against Voldemort. With as often as we've used them, we're probably the foremost experts in the use of Time Magic on the planet at the moment." he explained, allowing the Time Turner to settle back around his neck next to the Cypher.

Examining the wards, he nodded in satisfaction and silently conjured a bed and nightstand. Summoning a paper and pen from his desk on the other side of the Cube, the same message he had read an hour before was scrolled down and stuck the ceiling before he strode over to his passed out younger-self and the tiny newspark orbiting around him, trilling softly in confusion. "Alright, little one. I've got to put this ingrate to bed, then we'll figure out what to do with you." he murmured, levitating his younger-self up out of the chair, throwing a low-level circular barrier up when the newspark tried to follow. "Now, now. You stay right there. I'll be right back." he scolded, wagging his finger at it. Striding back to the shelter, he wasted no time depositing his younger-self and sealing him in, not worrying the least about him suffocating with the liberal use of air filtration spells, which filtered carbon dioxide and turned it into breathable oxygen. All of his highest security safe houses had them, as they had no physical entrances; the only way in through the Shadow Realm.

"Now, what to do with you?" Abyss mused, looking over the newspark as he collapsed the barrier, allowing it to flit around him within his energy field, keeping it safe and stable. "You can't just flutter around like this. It's too dangerous. And though they haven't yet, there's a chance someone might see you and capture you again." he mused, cupping the newspark in his hands when it nudged up against he chest.

**Ξ She requires a Carrier. Ξ** Primus informed him, watching them interact through the computer's camera. **Ξ I cannot take her back into myself. Her spark would be extinguished as surely as if she remained without. Ξ**

"A Carrier?" Abyss questioned, studying the little soul in his hands as he recalled some of the Cybertronian history he had observed during his time connected to the ancient Being's mind. "As I recall, the Carrier was the one that held the newspark within them until a protoform could be built for them or, in the case of the efficient Femmes and Seekers, a protoform was internally formed around the spark similar to the way an organic body creates a child's body within them." he mused, glancing between the spark and the webcam "May I assume you wish me to be her Carrier?"

**Ξ It is the only option I can think of. Ξ** Primus conceded **Ξ She is too weak to take a frame, though I am aware that they can join with Human technology to create one. You are correct in stating that it is too dangerous for her to remain exposed as she is. I can only assume it is exposure to your unique energies that is keeping her stable now. A newspark, or any spark for that matter, should not be without a frame for as long as she has. Ξ**

Looking over the little spark, Abyss slumped into his chair and thought. It was somewhat conceivable that he should be able to do this, even if the _Ba_ in his hands wasn't earthbound. Males, or rather _Wizards_, were capable of carrying children if they had the right potions or simply sufficient power levels, their magic creating an artificial womb to hold the child the same way a woman's natural womb did. He, honestly, had never really considered baring a child himself, though he had far enough magic to sustain one. Studying the little spark whirring sleepily against his chest, he couldn't help but smile, remembering the time he held Teddy, Remus' son, in his arms for the first time.

"It's alright, little one. I'll protect you." he murmured soothingly, repeating the same promise he had made three days before when he first saw the newspark come into the world. Opening himself to the thrum of energy against his chest, he willed his magic and power to accept the foreign _Ba_ within him, not as an invader or a parasite, but as his own child... his daughter. With a flare that completely loosened any reigns he might have had on either of them, he watched in fascination as the newspark sunk into his chest, settling in close to his Core, which wrapped it a protective bubble of magic, tendrils of his power doing the same.

Taking a breath, his magic and power swirled around him, easily reaching out to the limits of the wards his had around the base and beyond, feeling every life within his range of perception, consciously avoiding entering the Dark One's chamber beyond inspecting the integrity of and pushing more power into the ward stones around it. His mind, channeled through tendrils of magic, brushed against their subconscious with questions, seeking out those who might pose threat to his new charge.

ᴪ What do you think of creatures being created from the Cube's energy? If you knew they were alive, that they had souls, would you still hurt them? Would you still kill them? Would you lock them away and experiment on them? ᴪ

-oOoOoOo-

From within his vessel of the AllSpark, despite everything he'd seen, everything he'd experienced across the multiverse, Primus couldn't help but feel a sense of fascination in the face of the amount of power the young organic put out. Curious, he carefully shifted a tendril of his own power towards the new Carrier, inspecting his general health and the integrity of the chamber he'd felt somehow forming within him when he'd accepted the newspark, giving a mental blink of surprise and amusement over the form the chamber had taken. He had, of course, noticed High Protector's intrigue with his Seeker decedents when he was showing him the history of his children. It seemed, even without having an in-depth understanding of them, the Earth's High Protector sought to emulate them, much as he did in his mental representation.

The chamber that now held the tiny newspark very much resembled an organic and energy formed Velha Chamber, the Seeker's answer to the Femme's ability to safely carry a newspark and internally create a frame for it. Even now he could sense the newspark changing as she absorbed energy from her new Carrier. It would be interesting to see the changes she showed from her Cybertronian-born siblings once she had a frame.

-oOoOoOo-

Moderating his breathing, Abyss slowly began to reel his power in with every breath, leaving behind a marker on every soul within his current range who posed a threat to his daughter as it lazily curled back up within him, returning to it's mostly dormant state more willingly than he had expected with would. Slumping bonelessly into the embrace of his ridiculously comfortable chair –made that way via liberal abuse of various luxury charms–, the thought came to him that he should perhaps allow himself to just _let go_ more often, dropping of pretenses and the mask he wore day in and day out. It had been _years_ since he felt so relaxed, despite the need floating in the back of his mind to go and physically work his frustration with his co-workers out on the General's soldiers.

He was actually rather relieved after he scan of the base. He didn't work with as many monsters as he feared he was. Yes, there was a disturbing number who had the same mentality of Terrance, but for every Terrance there were at least a half dozen Samantha's and Michelson's. He wished the numbers weren't that close, but it was still a better ratio than he feared when he first started searching. Absently vanishing the footrest he'd conjured, Abyss sighed heavily and reluctantly replaced his mask as he allowed the wards around the Cube chamber to return to their waiting state, returning the existence of the chamber to the minds of it's personnel.

It was only minutes later that the personnel door was roughly pushed open, admitting the entrance of Banachek, Michelson and, surprisingly, General Lee, who took in his seemingly catatonic form, leaned back in his chair staring blankly at the ceiling, with no small amount of concern. Michelson had informed his supervisor of his co-worker's reaction after witnessing the transformation the Cube's energy caused in electronics. The General had stumbled on their conversation, having already been on base for the event with a dozen extra soldiers, just in case. When they had been unable to find the young researcher afterward, with Michelson and Banachek being the last to remember even seeing him, they had all been, understandably, more than a little concerned.

"Harrison? Are you alright?" Michelson questioned, hesitantly stepping closer to the younger researcher, his deeply buried instincts twitching in the face of the power that still lingered around the room, warning him away from the Being before him, warning him to approach at his own peril.

"You alive over there, Black?" the General questioned after several seconds when only silence answered them. All three of them unconsciously flinched back when the green gaze turned from the ceiling onto them, leaving them with the feeling of having their souls stripped bare before, with a blink, his mask fell fully back into place.

"Yeah, I'm alright." Harry sighed, reluctantly hauling himself from his chair, his tone hollow as he listlessly shuffled towards them "If the offer is still open, General, I wouldn't say no to destroying a bag right now."

"Are you sure you're alright, Mr. Black?" Banachek questioned.

"I'm fine, Mr. Banachek. I'm just repressing." Harry answered after moment, speaking in half truths as he shuffled past them "Not every day you find out you work with monsters, after all." he muttered, fingers twitching as some of his previous anger began to come back.

"Offer's still open, Black... though with the way you're acting right now you're going to get targeted." Lee warned, raising a brow of only moderate surprise when a somewhat dark smirk pulled at the man's lips.

"Oh good..."

-oOoOoOo-

Alright, for all those out there who plan to translate my little spell up there on page 7, this is what it's _suppose_ to say:

"I command the Dark One be entrapped, for it's poisoned _Ka_ to empower the cage I now construct. Contain this darkness, this taint that poisons life. Let it not reach those I call under my protection. I claim this place, where the river flows and energy is created. As the Master of Death, I command. So I have spoken, so mote it be!"


End file.
